David Miliband: The food industryhas a major impact on the environment, accounting for 14 per cent. of energy consumption by UK business and 7 million tonnes of carbon every year. The Government have implemented a number of measures under the food industry sustainability strategy to reduce negative impacts. I can tell the House that I am meeting the supermarkets today to discuss progress.

David Miliband: When I meet the supermarkets later today, I shall certainly ask Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury's whether they agree that Tesco provides a model of good practice and see what reaction I get. I take my hon. Friend's point about transport logistics and waste. I was surprised to find that the supermarkets are on track, following the EU packaging directive, to reduce packaging by between 55 and80 per cent. It is also worth mentioning—other hon. Members may raise it—the commitment in the energy review to ensure that some 5,000 medium-sized public and private sector organisations are part of a UK emissions trading system to deliver 1.2 million tonnes of carbon reduction every year. That is a major step forward, which I hope will command support throughout the House.

David Miliband: The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. I think that I am right in saying that about 76 per cent. of food bought in the UK is domestically produced, though that is down by 5 or6 per cent. over the last decade. Ensuring that local supply chains are strong and that local food producers are able to get their goods to market efficiently and effectively while securing a fair price for what they produce is critical. The hon. Gentleman also made the important point that global trade can benefit developing countries, or countries from which we import food, and be an important part of their standard of living. That can be done in either a more or less environmentally sensitive way. From our point of view, it is imperative that it is done in a more environmentally sensitive way.

Andrew Turner: The Isle of Wight is not entirely devoid of natural resources, but two Tesco-size lorries cross the Solent every year for every man, woman and child on the island to serve its supermarkets. At the same time, we produce a huge amount of agricultural produce ourselves. Whatcan the Secretary of State do to reduce the foodmiles, to which the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr. McCrea) referred, that severely damage the environment?

Madeleine Moon: Does my hon. Friend agree that with 71 per cent. of British butterflies and 44 per cent. of British moths in decline, hedgerows and field margins are critical to ensuring diversity? Those creatures, which are important to the farmer for the fertilisation of his crops, should be protected?

Barry Gardiner: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those remarks. He highlighted stockpile sales, which is a critical issue to address. As he knows, there already is an international ban on the commercial trade in ivory, and the UK will not support any reopening of that trade. In 2002, the CITES parties drew a distinction between a general return to commercial ivory trade and one-off sales of legally acquired stockpiled ivory. The UK's position is clear: we will not agree to the one-off sales going ahead unless all the conditions to prevent a damaging rise in elephant poaching and any increase in the illegal trade have been fully met. I can assure my hon. Friend that I have already met IFAW and discussed this subject. I have asked it to help me look at the statistics that will under-gird those decisionsand to prepare a response for me. I look forward to receiving it.

Ben Bradshaw: English Nature has advised that increased scalloping is having a significant impact on important reef features and it has recommended the closure of60 square miles of Lyme bay. I would prefer, and am still hoping, to find a voluntary solution to the problem, but if that proves impossible I am prepared to introduce compulsory measures to protect the local marine environment.

David Miliband: I share wholeheartedly my hon. Friend's commitment to the urgency and importance of moving forward. I can say two things. First, Australian states, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Switzerland, Norway and a number of US states are introducing emissions trading schemes, which is interesting evidence of the progress of the idea. Secondly, I can assure him that in the Gleneagles dialogue that will continue in Mexico in October and then at the Nairobi conference of the United Nations in November, the Government will be pushing hardto build consensus about the importance of the international stabilisation goals in respect of carbon dioxide and to take forward the agenda on the global mechanisms, which include all the major players, for finding the most cost-effective ways of reducing emissions, which we must do sooner rather than later.

Peter Ainsworth: The Secretary of State will recognise the importance of persuading the US Administration to engage positively on the issues of climate change and emissionstrading. Given that we have discovered this week that the special relationship seems, shall we say, a little one-sided, how confident is he that British effortsto persuade the Bush Administration to take a responsible lead in global emissions trading will be met by more than a shrug and a yo?

Ben Bradshaw: The agency spent £9.8 million of its grant in aid in England and Wales on fisheries and £7 million on navigation in 2002-03, and is currently intendingto spend £9.4 million and about £12 million respectively in 2006-07. For the same periods, income from rod licences was £16.1 million and £20 million respectively, and income from navigation registrations was £3.3 million and £4.2 million.

Ben Bradshaw: My hon. Friend, who is a champion in the House for the angling community, is absolutely right. The situation with carp herpes is serious,and in view of the latest developments it is my intention, subject to discussions with the devolved Administrations, to make KHV a notifiable disease.

Ian Pearson: Yes, the Government are seriously committed to increasing biomass production. Our biomass capital grant scheme is allocating between£10 million and £15 million over the next couple of years; £66 million has been allocated to develop markets in biomass combined heat and power electricity generation and £80 million is availablefor microgeneration, which will include biomass technologies. There is a range of projects that we believe can come on stream. We would like to see the prediction in Ben Gill's report that biomass could actually meet 6 per cent. of heat and electricity generation by 2020 fulfilled.

Roger Williams: Biomass has greater potential to replace fossil fuels than biofuels, in the short term at least, yet it attracts little attention and less publicity. Have the Government made an assessment of the establishment grants paid to farmers and landowners to plant biomass, such as short-term coppice crops and miscanthus? Although I understood that the bio-energy infrastructure scheme was taking no further applications, the Government have stated that they might take a further round of applications? Will the Minister make a statementabout that?

Martin Horwood: I agree with the Minister's comment that there is a lot more that the Government can do in this area. On reflection, is not the Minister slightly embarrassed that the energy review made only the briefest mention in passing of small and medium-scale biomass and bioenergy generation, despite increasingly clear evidence thatthat smaller-scale generation offers a more efficient, economical, decentralised and secure renewable source? It has huge potential, as the Biomass Task Force rightly identified. Is it not true that in the area of biocrops and bio-energy, even the United States under George Bush is doing more on the ground than this Government?

David Heath: Significant progress has been made by local authorities in recycling domestic waste, but there is a complete blind spot with regard to trade waste, for which they do not have any responsibility. There are disincentivesfor companies to separate their waste at source. Companies in the restaurant and bar trade produce huge amounts of recyclable material that simply goes into the normal waste stream, and that is not sensible. Will the Under-Secretary address that problem as a matter of urgency?

Gregory Barker: Despite progress, we still lag far behind the rest of Europe in minimisation, reuse and recycling. Less waste is going to landfill, but under Government direction, in thenext few years, there will be a massive increase in incineration across the country. Was it not deeply disappointing that the energy review, which is so timid and lacking in substance in its support for renewables, simply paid lip service to energy from waste, which was discussed in only one small box? It did not have anything new to say, and it did not make a single new proposal on the subject. Does not that depressing policy vacuum on progressive EFW confirm what we already suspected—that Government thinking on waste and incineration is still dominated by a backward-looking, outdated, unambitious, burn-and-be-done-with-it mentality?

Ben Bradshaw: I am trying to work out the point the hon. Gentleman was trying to make. If it was aboutthe need for extra energy from waste capacity, yes, the Government accept that. If he was trying to make the opposite point, I have to tell him that I am often lobbied by Opposition Members who want more energy from waste. He is quite wrong to suggest that we did not feature energy from waste as a potential renewable energy source in the energy review—we did so, and our Department made darned sure that we did.

Jack Straw: The business for next week will be as follows:
	Monday 24 July—Second Reading of the Welfare Reform Bill.
	Tuesday 25 July—Motion on the retirement ofthe Clerk of the House, followed by considerationof Lords amendments to the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, followed by motion on the summer recess Adjournment.
	The House will not adjourn until Royal Assent has been received to any Act.
	The business for the week following the summer recess will be as follows:
	Monday 9 October—Remaining stages of the Road Safety Bill [Lords].
	Tuesday 10 October—Second Reading of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill.
	Wednesday 11 October—Opposition Day [18th Allotted Day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.
	Thursday 12 October—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Civil Aviation Bill, followed by a debate on climate change on a motion for the adjournment of the House.
	Friday 13 October—The House will not be sitting.
	The provisional business for the week commencing 16 October will include:
	Monday 16 October—Opposition Day [19th Allotted Day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion in the name of the Liberal Democrats. Subject to be announced.
	I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 12 October and19 October will be:
	Thursday 12 October—A debate on the report from the International Development Committee on the WTO Hong Kong ministerial conference and the Doha development agenda.
	Thursday 19 October—A debate on the 28th annual House of Commons Commission report.
	I should like to remind the House that it agreed to sit from 11.30 am on Tuesday 25 July, and there will be no business next Tuesday in Westminster Hall.
	I should also like to tell the House that thestate opening of Parliament will be on Wednesday15 November.
	The House will rise at the end of business on 25 July and return on Monday 9 October. I have given serious consideration to the points made by Members on both sides of the House regarding the accountability of Government during the summer recess. I am pleased to inform the House that later today I intend to table a motion and an explanatory memorandum that will allow for the tabling and answering of named day questions and, if there is a need, written ministerial statements on specified days during the first two weeks of September. This information will thereafter be printed in the  Official Report.
	Before closing, Mr. Speaker, I should like to take the opportunity to wish all Members of the House a productive summer recess in which they are able to see their families for a normal holiday period, and then able, as colleagues on both sides of the House always do, to devote time to their constituencies. I also give my thanks to the staff of the House for their continued support and to staff in Government Departments who provide briefings for my weekly business statement—although of course the answers are entirely my responsibility.

Jack Straw: I thank the shadow Leader of the House very much for her remarks and compliments, which I take in the spirit in which they were intended. I hope that one of the things that she does over the recess will be to sack the person who writes her lines. I say that in a spirit of great affection for the right hon. Lady, but, honestly, after putting her up to do that awfulnumber on pop song titles—which turned out to be inaccurate—and now this stuff, he really ought to be sacked.
	I shall now deal with the questions that the right hon. Lady raised. She asked whether notice of written ministerial statements would appear in advance, and the answer is yes. Notice will appear in the normal way in the Questions Book—the blues attached to the Order Paper—alongside the notice of questions. I will also talk to the Clerks Office, to the right hon. Lady and to the Liberal spokesman, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), about whether we can arrange for Members to receive electronic notice, particularly of the written ministerial statements, as Members will be at a distance. I want to ensure that this experiment works.
	The right hon. Lady asked whether there would be an opportunity for a statement on the crisis in the middle east. The answer is that there are Foreign Office questions next Tuesday, so hon. Members will have every opportunity to question my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and her ministerial colleagues. The right hon. Lady also asked whether there would be a debate on international development before the end of the parliamentary Session. The answer is that we hope so, but, given the other pressures on the parliamentary timetable and the buffers of the Queen's Speech, I cannot guarantee it. However, we will do our very best to have such a debate either soon or in the run-up to the Queen's Speech, this side of the year.
	The right hon. Lady made some remarks about the health service. I have been looking at the health service in her own constituency. There is greater competition for jobs in health care because we have greatly increased the number of places available. There used to be complaints that we were recruiting so many people from overseas. These days, thanks to the dramatic increase in places for nurses, for doctors, for paramedics and for physiotherapists, most recruitment can take place in the UK. Yes, of course there is competition, but I simply do not believe these statements that thousands of new staff will be unemployed. That is not the case at all. Meanwhile, I note that, in the Windsor, Ascot and Maidenhead Primary Care Trust, there has been a 5.2 per cent. increase above inflation in real terms in a single year, and that the trust received three stars for its latest performance. In the same area, waiting lists are down by 10 per cent. since June 2002. It is very odd that that was not mentioned just now.
	In relation to the Home Office capability review, the right hon. Lady did not mention an increase of 440 in the number of police officers in her area and, of course, a big drop in crime. She did mention the DFES. Astonishing additional resources have been devoted to education, with primary school and secondary school results both up. She criticised the DWP's capability review, as a result of which unemployment in her area has been cut by more than half in nine years and long-term unemployment by two thirds.
	Lastly, the right hon. Lady asked about a debate on Britain's influence in the world, which I would be absolutely delighted to have. I make no criticism of one of my distinguished predecessors, both as Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary, Lord Hurd, but it is impossible to survey the past nine years without recognising that Britain's influence in Europe, the middle east and across the world has greatly extended and increased compared with the previous 18 years.

David Heath: I thank the Leader of the House for giving us the business. I am delighted that, even at this stage in the Session, it is not too late to introduce a newHome Office Bill, the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill, on Tuesday 10 October.
	I think that the Government intend to move a carry-over motion for the Welfare Reform Bill on24 July. Carry-over is normally by agreement between all parties, so some discussions are necessary before the motion is moved. Before we get to that point, will the Leader of the House ensure that the Committee stage of that very important Bill is not truncated by Prorogation or for any other reason? Secondly, can it be ensured that the Committee has the necessary draft orders, which form a large part of the substance of the Bill, from the start of its proceedings?
	I welcome the Leader of the House's comments about questions during this over-long recess. The ability to put questions is important, and the ability of the Government to answer them equally so. Their record is not good over recent years. I put a named day question to the Home Office, inevitably, for 3 May, and did not receive a reply, which said that it was not prepared to answer me, until 13 July. The Treasury is even worse. My hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) tabled 15 questions for answer on the very important matter of fraud in the tax credits system, and received a single reply on Wednesday that did not answer the specific points raised. This is a key issue. If we are to hold the Government to account, there must be an understanding among Ministers and civil servants about what comprises an adequate response to a parliamentary question. Will he speak to his Cabinet colleagues and the head of the home civil service to ensure that proper answers are given?
	I welcome this afternoon's debate on foreign affairs. It is essential that we debate the grave situation in the middle east.
	Let me say in response to what was said by the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) that there has been a change of emphasis in Foreign Office policy even since Monday, when the Minister for the Middle East, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells), made what I thought was an extremely well-balanced statement to the House. We heard the Prime Minister's replies on the same subject yesterday. As I have said in a speech on home affairs, we are not a wholly owned subsidiary of the United States, and our foreign policy must not appear to be dictated by the White House. That is an important issue, and I hope the debate will explore it.
	I know that the right hon. Gentleman will spend the recess on his soap box in Blackburn; I will spend it undertaking my usual tour of the 120 or so villages in my constituency. I know already that the questions I will be asked will be about closures of sub-post offices, the state of agriculture, police amalgamations, and the fact that although record amounts are being spent on the health service, hospital wards are still being closed.
	Will the Leader of the House ensure that on our return we debate all those important issues, so that I can tell my constituents "Fear not, your concerns will be raised as soon as Parliament resumes in October"?

Jack Straw: It is helpful to have that on the record. Many of the Bills that the hon. Gentleman voted against are the ones that are protecting our citizens and helping us to reduce crime. I am glad to have secured that admission from him.
	The Welfare Reform Bill is one of two measures that we intend to carry over. I hope that that can be agreed, but if it cannot, it cannot. The purpose of carry-over has been accepted by the House, and it is very sensible. It should be borne in mind that it does not make it any easier for Government to pass legislation, because we have to ensure that it is passed within 12 months of the date of its introduction; and of course the Bill will have a normal Committee stage.
	I recall hearing my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions say that he would do his best to ensure that the principal draft orders were presented to the House, but I do not think he said that all of them would be. I will pass on to him what the hon. Gentleman has said.
	As for Home Office questions, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is present to make his daily statement or speech to the House. I am sure we all welcome that, but only those of us who have held my right hon. Friend's portfolio quite understand how it feels to wake up each morning and hear five stories about the Home Office, one of which you may know about, four of which you have not the first idea about, and all five of which you must answer for during the rest of the day. Nevertheless, my right hon. Friend heard what the hon. Gentleman said about the backlog of questions, and I can say on his behalf that he and his colleagues have made every effort to clear it.
	Ministers and officials must recognise the needfor questions to be answered, but Members must recognise—and I am pleased to say that it has been recognised in all parts of the House—that if the Order Paper is overloaded with questions in industrial quantities, tabled by researchers and in some instances unseen by the Members concerned, there are bound to be logjams. It is a real problem. I am glad to see that Members agree with that.
	I am assiduous, as are all my colleagues, in ensuring that questions are answered whenever possible, but we have a problem in the House with researchers trying to prove a point, and with the TheyWorkForYou.com website, which seems to measure Members' work in quantitative rather than qualitative terms. That is an issue for the whole House, not just for Ministers.
	As for my soap box in Blackburn, I was indeed on it on Saturday and, I am pleased to say, received approbation—as ever—for what had happened on8 July, after 18 years of my campaigning and being given the raspberry. In 1998 my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson), then Secretary of State for Health, announced that there would be a new hospital in Blackburn. It has now been built, £140 million has been spent on it, and on 8 July it opened for business. That was a great day for a Labour Government and the people of Blackburn.

Anne Main: The Government's avowed intention is to create further rail freight interchanges. I have met 400-odd constituents whoare extremely concerned about the possibility of a3.5 million sq ft interchange in the constituency. I would welcome an urgent debate on the future of rail freight and the positioning of rail freight interchanges, and I hope very much that the Government will have time to provide one.

John Battle: As chair of the all-party group on poverty, I wish to draw my right hon. Friend's attention to early-day motion 2529, entitled "Lunch expenses for unemployed volunteers".
	 [That this House believes that volunteers play an important role in building and empowering communities and that volunteering should be encouraged for all; supports job seekers and the unemployed who make time to volunteer whilst also seeking employment; notes with dismay the recent Department for Work and Pensions booklet that states that volunteers on Income Support or Job Seekers Allowance will not normally be entitled to claim lunch as an expense; is concerned that the long-standing reimbursement of volunteers as a way of appreciating and recognising their input may be undermined; is further concerned that those least able to afford volunteering are more likely to be discouraged from doing so if reasonable expenses are not provided; notes that volunteering should not be considered 'basic needs'; and calls on the Department for Work and Pensions to promote volunteering as a benefit to job seekers and their communities, for which volunteers should have the right to claim reasonable and essential expenses.]
	This may seem a small matter. The motion refersto a booklet produced by the Department for Work and Pensions, "A Guide to Volunteering While on Benefits". The booklet is welcome, but buried in it is a small change in the guidance: the withdrawal of lunch expenses as a legitimate reimbursable claim. That will prevent many people on benefits from being able to volunteer.
	I think all Members will agree that volunteering is a route back to contact and work. The matter is urgent, because the Government are introducing changes in incapacity benefit—which I hope we all support, because they will encourage people to return to work. If that small change in the guidelines were amended during the summer, while we are away, it would open up opportunities rather than closing them down.

Nicholas Winterton: I warmly congratulate the Leader of the House on his announcement of the tabling of named-day written questions during the recess, which partly meets the recommendations of the Procedure Committee a year or two ago. Will he give an assurance that that facility can be extended in future years?
	I am happy to join in the House's general euphoria about the approaching recess and to add my good wishes to those of others. I also warmly thankthe Government for the announcement made at Farnborough air show about the award to BAE Systems of a contract for 12 Nimrod MRA4 aircraft. On behalf of the management and work force, I am most grateful to the Government. However, that leads me to my real question. Will the right hon. Gentleman find time for a debate on manufacturing industry and the different sectors of manufacturing that are of strategic importance to this country? Having such a debate at the earliest opportunity is vital. Manufacturing is in difficulty and we must maintain the strategic sectors for the benefit of this country's security.

Jack Straw: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments on the introduction of new arrangements for parliamentary questions. I intend that when we return in October, we have the opportunity to debate the summer recess, which is a matter for the House rather than the Government. The experience of the new arrangements for parliamentary questions and written ministerial statements can be taken into account in those debates. I thank the hon. Gentleman for being one of those people who have prodded me on the issue.
	On BAE Systems, I also declare an interest in that many of my constituents work for the organisation and I am glad about the announcement. I am also happy to pass on the request for a debate on manufacturing, which faces a paradoxical situation. For example, car production is not quite at its peak level, but at1.6 million units, it is well above the trough of 900,000 to which it fell in the early 1980s, and we are exporting cars around the world. Aerospace is a world beater and both the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry are well seized of the importance of maintaining manufacturing's output, albeit in a context in which employment levels may well reduce. One of the key challenges is to see increases in productivity beyond the trend rate.

Peter Bone: In a recent parliamentary answer, it was stated that in 2004there were 103,000 prescriptions for diamorphine hydrochloride, falling to 61,000 in 2005 due to a shortage of supplies. That has led to seriously and terminally ill patients not being able to receive the pain relief that they so desperately require, resulting in unnecessary suffering. Will the Leader of the House ask the Secretary of State for Health to make a statement before the summer recess?

Jack Straw: We have had loads of debates on that,but I am always happy to debate it. What I find, not least on my soap box in Blackburn, is that people understand how profoundly damaging such changes in the way this House operates would be, with a two-tier system of Members of Parliament and extraordinary legal arguments about whether a matter was English or Scottish. Scotland benefits from the Union, and so does England, and it would be to the detriment of the whole of the United Kingdom if we were to follow the irresponsible path proposed by the Leader of the Opposition last month—but not this month—for a two-tier system of Members of Parliament.

Ken Purchase: As I go around my constituency, I note with great pride the improvements in education. Regrettably, I spot a cloud on the horizon, although it is no bigger than a man's hand at present. Can we bring my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills to the House to deal with reports that suggest that the Government, through officials,are telling local authorities with school building programmes that they will not be successful unless that programme includes a commitment to an academy? Does my right hon. Friend realise that such a stand-off between the Government and local authorities condemns some of our children to schools such as those in my constituency that badly need replacing—for example, Heath Park—and perhaps delivers us into the hands of religious bigots, from whom children will not benefit, or indeed those who have £2 million to buy a school and whose egos need assuaging?

Jack Straw: The hon. Lady makes a strong case. Although the powers of public authorities in respect of permitted developments are limited, I am surprised that information has not been made available to her constituents. I will refer the matter that she raises tomy right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, and the hon. Lady may wish to raise the issue in the debate on the summer Adjournment on Tuesday.

Justine Greening: I wish to raise with the Leader of the House the tragic case of my constituent, Mr. Roy Harward, who is suffering from mesothelioma and ask whether we may have a debate on the treatment of—not compensation for—that disease. One drug, Alimta, is licensed in this country to treat the symptoms and pain caused by mesothelioma. It can prolong life by two to three months, possibly more, but it is prescribed under a postcode lottery. If my constituent lived in Scotland, or the north-east or north-west of England, he could be prescribed that drug, but he has just had funding for treatment with Alimta refused by the local primary care trust. May we debate this issue in the House or have an urgent statement by the Secretary of State for Health, because it is unthinkable and unethical that my constituent is dying but cannot get the treatment he needs to alleviate his pain and prolong his life. There is no point—

Paul Flynn: I tabled early-day motion 2591.
	 [That this House is exasperated at the four-year delay in depositing information in the Library despite an assurance on Afghan poppy eradication by a Foreign Office Minister on 14th May 2002 (volume 385, column 625) that 'details of the eradication programme, maps and a video of what has been done will be placed in the Library'; notes that, despite repeated requests by the hon. Member for Newport West and Library staff since 2nd May 2006, none of the material has been placed in the Library; further notes that 21 million compensation money appears to have been paid to the Afghan government but did not reach the farmers whom it was intended to compensate; and believes that absence of the programme, maps and videos will result in a further provocative injustice that will thwart the farmers' continuing efforts to obtain compensation.]
	I tabled that EDM to persuade the Foreign Office to publish essential information required by Afghani farmers in a current compensation claim that they have against the British Government. In May 2002, a promise was made in an oral answer in this House that that information—videos and maps—would be placed in the Library. Despite the efforts of the Library and others, that information is still not there. Those farmers have been robbed: their crops were destroyed, and although £21 million of British taxpayers' money was paid to the corrupt Karzai Government, none of it has reached the farmers.

John Reid: Yesterday, I set out to the House our plans for transforming the Home Office, and I said that I would return to the House with two further sets of proposals, the first of them to rebalance the criminal justice system and the second to reform the immigration and nationality directorate. With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall today present to the House the results of my review of the criminal justice system—"Re-balancing the criminal justice system in favour of the law-abiding majority"—copies of which I have placed in the Library.
	As I made clear in my statement yesterday, we are not starting from year zero. My predecessors and colleagues across Government have made substantial improvements in all aspects of the criminal justice system. The overall result of that is that crime is down by 35 per cent. since 1997. Offences brought to justice have increased by 27 per cent. to 1.27 million since 2002. There are more police officers on the streets than ever before. We have given local authorities tough powers to tackle antisocial behaviour in the battle to regain community space. We have also modernised legislation in areas such as asset recovery to ensure that organised criminals are hit where it hurts—in their pockets.
	However, it is clear that there are still major issues to do with the way that the criminal justice system currently operates and—just as importantly—how it is perceived to operate. Too often, it appears that the criminal justice system is on the side of the offender—that it protects their interests and individual rights over those of the victim and the law-abiding majority. That has to change. All the proposals set out today have at their core the aim to rebalance the criminal justice system in favour of the victim and the law-abiding majority. They are set out in detail in the published plan, but I shall highlight a few of them to illustrate our direction and our intent.
	We will put law-abiding people, victims and their communities first. When asked, only 36 per cent. of people say that they are confident that the criminal justice system meets the needs of victims, compared with 80 per cent. who believe that it is fair to the accused. We will take steps to redress that imbalance. For instance, we will reform the Parole Board so that all new members have experience of victims' issues. We will ensure that in serious sexual and violent cases, there is a victim's voice and decisions must be unanimous. We also aim to make violent offenders pay towards the health care costs of their victims, as offenders currently do for road traffic injuries, and to reform the law to make it easier for victims to sue offenders who later get a windfall.
	We will act to prevent human rights—which are rightly held dear by all in this House—from being used by offenders to secure perverse outcomes that penalise victims and the law-abiding majority. In the 1996 Chahal case, it was found that the United Kingdom Government could not consider the protection of the public as a balancing factor when arguing the case for the deportation of a dangerous person. We believe that that goes against the fundamental principle in the Human Rights Act 1998 that individual and collective rights can and should be balanced against each other, and we are working with our partners in Europe to challenge that finding as vigorously as possible. We will also ensure, by legislation if necessary, that public bodies give proper priority to public protection when considering the individual rights of offenders. To support criminal justice agencies to counter misrepresentation and misuse of the Human Rights Act, we will ensure that criminal justice agencies' front-line staff get practical advice and guidance to dispel myths about the Act, and we will introduce a new online legal hotline to help them to do so. In addition, we will prevent criminals from abusing the law by restricting the ability of the plainly guilty to be released on appeal due to procedural irregularities.
	We also need a sentencing framework that gives the public confidence. We have equipped the judiciary with new powers to allow judges to detain serious offenders indefinitely for the protection of the public, and over 1,000 of them have already been used. However, we must do more to reassure the public. Therefore, we will end the automatic one-third discount given to those caught red-handed and who plead guilty, irrespective of the circumstances. We will also remove the automatic discount offered to those resentenced on appeal, and we will end the requirement that judges should automatically halve the minimum term when setting the earliest release date for those serving unlimited sentences. The Lord Chancellor, the Attorney-General and I will consult on options on how to achieve that.
	We must ensure that offenders comply. People's confidence in the criminal justice system is undermined when they see offenders deliberately flouting the rules. Therefore, we intend to speed up the recall to prison of those offenders who break the terms of their licence. We also intend to speed the return to court of people on bail who fail to attend by restricting the use of "warrants with bail", and to implement a presumption against bail for those who abscond or offend while on bail.
	Another key area in the plan that we have published today is the focus on gripping offenders in order to better protect the public. We have 19,000 more prison places than in 1997, and about 7,000 more serious violent offenders are behind bars. It is clear to me—and, I am sure, to many in the House—that there are people in our prisons who should not be there. They range from foreign nationals to vulnerable women to those for whom mental health treatment would be more appropriate. I do not consider that what we propose in the plan is about being tougher or softer; it is about being fairer and smarter and, above all, about better protecting the public against the most serious offenders. As we make available additional capacity, we will ensure that these new resources are focused on the serious, violent and prolific offenders who ought to be in prison—sometimes for longer than they at present spend in prison. So we will ensure that we have the places that we need to protect the public.
	We are embarking on 900 prison places by autumn 2007. We will expand prison places by an additional 8,000 to keep dangerous offenders in for longer. To make more space in prison for a tougher approach toward the most serious crimes, we will send more foreign nationals back to their own country to serve their sentences; speed up the court processes, which will mean that those not yet convicted spend less time on remand; and make better use of tagging for people on bail for less serious offences.
	We must also do more to tackle the most prolific offenders, including drug users. The report details how we are overhauling our priority and prolific offenders and drug interventions programmes, with tougher conditions, tougher enforcement and new follow-up assessments. We will also clamp down on serious offending through measures that include increasing the maximum penalty for carrying a knife to four years, setting an ambitious new target for seizing the assetsof criminals, and increasing the private sector's involvement in asset seizure.
	For the vast majority of people, their world begins with what they see when they open their own front door, step into their own street and enter and move among their own communities. What is sometimes regarded as low-level offending and antisocial behaviour thus causes real harm, damage and fear. We must therefore ensure that we tackle this issue ever more efficiently, so that the public feel increasingly safer. To do that, I propose, among other things, to add to our present range of ASBOs by examining the provision of powers to close businesses that sell knives and spray cans to under-age consumers, as part of a major review of summary powers that we will publish later in the year. I also propose to introduce parental compensation orders in 10 areas from this summer to make sure that parents take responsibility for the damage that their children cause.
	Finally, we need to ensure that all this is underpinned by a simpler, swifter and fairer system to support our rebalancing aims. My right hon. Friends the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney-General and I propose to work with practitioners across the criminal justice system to speed up magistrates court and Crown court processes; to expand the use of conditional cautions issued by prosecutors, without the need to go to court; to develop bulk processing arrangements for simple non-contested cases such as TV licence non-payment; and to use a variety of approaches to speed up justice, such as live television link pilots between police stations and the courts, next day justice and taking courts closer to local communities.
	Today's plan is a comprehensive package of measures that builds on what this Government have done and reflects our ongoing commitment to public safety and the rights of the victim over the offender. I commend the plan to the House.

David Davis: Sadly, I cannot give way to Labour Members at the moment or I should be delighted to take that intervention.
	The first duty of a Government is to protect the public and, on too many occasions in the past nine years, this Government have failed to do that duty. The Home Secretary says that he now wants to rebalance the system and I sympathise with him, but before rebalancing the system one has to understand it. As we saw a few weeks ago in the case of Craig Sweeney,the Home Secretary's understanding is different from the Attorney-General's. That, in turn, is different from the Prime Minister's, which, in turn, is differentfrom the Lord Chancellor's. In the end, the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird), was forced to give a written apology for the row that she engendered following the Home Secretary's lead. Let us hope that they all now agree on what to do about this problem.
	Contrary to the Home Secretary's claims just now, under this Government crime has got worse, not better. Overall detection rates have dropped from 29 to 26 per cent., and, for violent offences, the fall is even worse: from 69 per cent. in 1997 to 50 per cent. today. For sex offences, the detection rate has more than halved.
	Yesterday, the Home Secretary said that he wanted to reduce the bureaucratic burden on the police. I welcome that, so will he now commit to cutting the red tape, political correctness and targets coming out of his Department, and let the police get out on the streets and do the job? Annual crime figures out today show how desperately we need the police out on patrol deterring crime and catching criminals, not filling in forms in the station.
	There are now almost 500,000 more recorded crimes a year than there were eight years ago. The number of violent crimes has more than doubled and there has been a seventh year-on-year increase. The justice gap—the difference between crimes committed and crimes cleared up, which a former Home Secretary, a former Lord Chancellor and a former Attorney-General all identified as the
	"key measure of the effectiveness of the criminal justice system"—
	has grown by more than 500,000 crimes a year. So much for this Government being tough on crime.
	The Government's record on the punishment, rehabilitation and supervision of offenders is equally catastrophic. Our prisons are full to bursting, which is, after all, why we are here today to discuss this issue. Offenders have little chance of rehabilitation, and dangerous criminals are released early. Some 70 per cent. of young males are now reconvicted within two years of release—up from 56 per cent. Since 1998, more than 200 offenders on supervision have been convicted of murder. Those facts are direct results of Government policy. They have consistently failed to create enough prison places, instead choosing to release offenders early, thereby putting the lives of innocent citizens at risk.
	Now the Home Secretary says that he will build more prisons, which we of course welcome. Will those extra places be enough—over and above the ongoing growth in the prison population—to accommodate the tougher sentences and guidelines that he is proposing today? When will those sentencing measures come into force? When will the new prisons be built and when will the 8,000 extra prison places be ready for use? I understand from press coverage that it will take five years to get these extra places on stream. What will happen meanwhile? Will there be more early releases of would-be murderers? Will there be more ridiculously light sentences for rapists and paedophiles? If, as he says, he is going to release other people, can he give us more details on who they will be?
	Because the Government failed to spend money on prisons in the past, they have had to rely more and more on non-custodial sentences, and the record is truly dreadful. A massive 88 per cent. of young offenders on the Government's flagship intensive supervision and surveillance programme, supposedly the toughest alternative to prison, reoffended within12 months.
	The Home Secretary mentioned the concernsabout drug treatment orders. Roughly 70 per cent. of offenders do not complete their orders, while 80 per cent. are reconvicted within two years. What is he going to do about the failing intensive supervision and surveillance programme and about the failure of drug treatment orders? Will he seriously consider our proposals for a tough residential treatment option for drugs users—ideally instead of prison, but even after prison? Drug addiction is probably the largest component in the increase in recidivism over the past several years.
	I welcome the proposal to accelerate the processesin magistrates and other courts. From memory, I think that the time taken by magistrates courts has increased in the past five years by two working weeks, with the increase in Crown courts about double that. In both cases, the extra time is the result of the burdens, regulations and complex legislation that the Government have laid on the courts. It is time that that problem was put right.
	As the Home Secretary just said, we are not starting from year zero. The Government have had nine years in office, during which time they have been long on promises but short on delivery. The simple truth is that we have heard all of this before. I enjoyed the headline in today's edition of the right hon. Gentleman's favourite daily read,  The Sun. It cries out, "Blair Axes Soft Sentences". I enjoyed that almost as much as last year's version—"I'll Change Law to Curb Thugs"—or the one of the year before—"Blair's Plan to End the Anarchy on Our Streets". Similar headlines appeared in the several preceding years, but what has happened? The problem has got worse, not better. So here we are again, facing the same problems, but with a different Labour Home Secretary claiming to have the solutions. The right hon. Gentleman talks a good story, but so did his three predecessors.
	I am sorry that the Leader of the House has left the Chamber, as he started the Labour tradition of talking tough on crime. The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) refined the art—boy, did he talk tough on crime. So did the right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), and the tabloids loved them. If speeches caught criminals, we would have swept the streets clean of lawlessness by now. Those three former Home Secretaries are the ones who presided over the disaster that we are witnessing today, because talk was all that they had to offer. Let us hope that, from this Home Secretary, we will get action, not words.

John Reid: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the kind words with which he welcomed my statement and for his support for some of the proposals in it. He asked whether we would consider other measures that he has looked at, and I can tell him that I am open-minded and always prepared to consider any measure that will protect the public better.
	I fear that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) probably wrote parts of his speech before he heard my statement. [Hon. Members: "No."] I said specifically that this was not a question of being tougher or softer, but of being smarter and better at protecting the public. I am interested in the objective effect of what we do, rather than in the talk, tough or otherwise, that surrounds it. He invited me to draw a comparison between his tough talk and some of the Opposition's actions, and I shall do so towards the end of my response to his remarks.
	The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that many members of the Parole Board have experience of being a victim in their normal lives. Not all of them do, however, and we want to ensure that all members have that perspective. That is why we want make that true of every new member.
	On human rights, I said that we would look at how legislation is misrepresented or misinterpreted, and at how it is administered. From even a brief survey, it is plain to me that human rights and other legislation can lead to misunderstanding. For example, the waythat the Data Protection Act 1998 was applied ledto problems in the pursuit of Huntley, while misrepresentation and misunderstanding of the human rights and other legislation were at the root of the release of Rice, who went on to murder Naomi Bryant.
	We need to be prepared to make available practical facilities to counter the myths about human rights when they are misused or misrepresented in such a way that people feel that they must take a particular course of action. That is the rebalancing that I am trying to achieve.
	The Leader of the Opposition has proposed that the European convention on human rights can be solved, not by amending or getting rid of it, but by introducing yet another Bill of Rights. That is the last thing that we need——a Bill of Rights that could contradict the ECHR. Anyway, that proposal was just another gimmick, like his views on antisocial behaviour, and did not last 24 hours, far less the tenures of three successive Home Secretaries.
	The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden mentioned the discussions that have taken place between the Lord Chancellor, the Attorney-General and myself on sentencing. The truth is that we have reached agreement on this matter. For instance, judges have no discretion when it comes to the mandatory 30 per cent. reduction in sentences that a guilty plea earns. That reduction applies irrespective of the circumstances in which a person is caught: even someone who is caught in flagrante will get that sentence reduction through pleading guilty. We are sometimes accused of taking discretion away from judges, but in this case we are giving it back to them.
	The right hon. Gentleman spoke about prison places. He likes to have it both ways: if we do not put people in prison, we are accused of being soft, but if we do, the complaint is that our prisons are bursting. I want to put the following on the record. There are now 19,000 more people in prison, many of them serious, violent or sexual offenders, than was ever the case under the previous Conservative Government. Moreover, sentences are much longer than they used to be under that Government. Of course we must look carefully at who is in prison but, when it comes to putting people behind bars, I am afraid that the Conservatives give us only the usual tough talk and soft-centred voting.
	I thought that sentencing might come up today, so I have brought with me the Conservative voting record on the tough measures that we have introduced. The early removals scheme allows foreign national prisoners to be deported halfway through their sentences, but the Conservatives voted against it. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 introduced tougher sentences for murder and for sexual and violent offences, and for persistent offenders, but the Conservatives voted against them. We brought in indeterminate sentences for people who have committed a serious sexual or violent offence, but the Conservatives voted against them. We introducedthe new five-year minimal custodial sentence for unauthorised possession of a firearm, but the Conservatives voted against it. I could go through the whole list, but it is clear that, as ever, the Opposition talk tough but vote soft. The overall 35 per cent. reduction in crime since we took over from the Conservatives is a mark of this Government's effectiveness.
	We do not claim that our performance is perfect, and that is why we review and upgrade it continually. However, it is a damn sight better than what we inherited from the previous Government.

John Denham: I welcome much of what my right hon. Friend said. If we want to be smarter, rather than simply tougher, we must recognise that our prisons are full and hold many of the wrong people, and that the prison regimeoffers precious little chance that prisoners can be rehabilitated and brought back into stable jobs and family life when they leave. My right hon. Friend must have secured a significant amount of new money: how will he use it to transform the prison regime, so that it places a much bigger emphasis on work and a disciplined working day, and on returning people to working life after they leave prison?

John Reid: Again, I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman, despite the burden of his remarks, seems to find much with which he can agree in what I have said today. I am always gratified to see that that is the case on both Opposition Benches.
	It is true that we should be spending more on health. From memory, the health budget has gone from£33 billion to £95 billion or thereabouts, including increases in mental health spending, so a considerable amount of money is already going into that sector, but the point about making sure that there are, in substance and in perception, sufficient prison places is this. It is the sine qua non for three things. The first is to ensure that those serious offenders who should be in prison for a long period for public protection purposes and for other reasons are kept there. Secondly, if we are to discriminate, in the proper sense, in order to relieve our prisons of the burdens of those who should not be there, it is important that the public believe that we are doing that for legitimate reasons and not just because we are short of prison places. Thirdly, I do not believe that the public will accept community service as a legitimate means of serving and repaying the community unless, again, they believe that it is being done for reasons other than a shortage of prison places. In short, more prison places is the sine qua non. It is the basic requirement for protecting the public better, ensuring that those who are in prison are the people who should be in prison and ensuring that there is a legitimacy to alternatives other than prison.
	The hon. Gentleman raised human rights. I do not think that it is tub thumping to say that the public are utterly bewildered by some sentences. He himself talked about that in his last comments. The public are utterly bewildered. There are two reasons for that: first, the misrepresentation of human rights and, secondly, the judgments on the European convention onhuman rights by the European Court. I mentioned one of them earlier—the Chahal judgment. That is outrageously at odds with what we believe to be the correct balance of human rights as expressed in the Human Rights Act and as understood by everyone in this Chamber: the balance of the individual versus the community. That is why we oppose that. It is not a matter of tub thumping. It is a matter of saying that there are substantial problems; there are problemsthat we must look at not only in legislation butas regards interpretation, misrepresentation and maladministration.
	The hon. Gentleman made a quip about being on television. As far as I can make out, he has a season ticket to the television studios. I have hardly been in them in the past seven weeks, but I have not needed to be because I have had the vicarious thrill of experiencing what they are like by watching him.

John Reid: That is absolutely true, which is oneof the reasons why we have been exploring and introducing prevention orders against organised crime, to prevent that and a number of other offences before they happen. I agree with my hon. Friend that the issue is important. We are already acting on it, but we will keep it under review, and if it is necessary to tweak or rebalance the system to counter it we will do so.

John Reid: I am glad to confirm to my hon. Friend that the priorities independently identified by her constituents are precisely mine: a visible, accessible, responsive police service is what people want in their communities. When I was speaking earlier, I received criticism from Opposition Members; I merely remind them that we have more police than ever before and more police in our streets and on the beat than ever before, accompanied by community support officers and neighbourhood wardens. They are developing neighbourhood teams, and are empowered to counter antisocial behaviours as never before. That we are doing all that reflects the fact that our priorities are the same as those of my hon. Friend's constituents.

John Reid: Yes, I will try to do that. In another place, Lady Corston is carrying out a review. My noble Friend Baroness Scotland, the Minister in the other place, takes a great interest in the matter and myhon. Friend the Member for City of Durham(Dr. Blackman-Woods), who has three prisons and a young offenders institution in her constituency, takes a particular interest, too. I shall rely on all of them to help me move in the direction she suggests.

Chris Bryant: I look forward to the Home Secretary's consultation with former jurors,as, like my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice), I was summoned for jury service—at the Old Bailey, last week. It was a bit of a damp squib; 120 of us were summoned and we sat in a cramped room for three hours before we were released without having to serve the rest of our two weeks. Do not we need radical changes in the way courts are run? The sittings should not simply be in the interests of the lawyers and at the convenience of the judge. There should be programmed times for cases so that trials are not as long as they are at present, and jurors and witnesses should not be treated as some kind of necessary evil.

John Reid: We do that by making sure that the maximum sentence for carrying a knife—whetherit is classified as an offensive weapon or an objectwith a point, which are the two classifications in legislation—is long enough to denote the seriousness of that act. That is why I have announced today, as part of my measures, that I intend to extend the maximum sentence for carrying an object with a point or a blade to four years.

John Redwood: Will the Minister give the House an indication of how many other organisations are under intensive review, withthe possibility of being banned? Is there a danger that the Minister will need to ban other organisations over the long parliamentary recess?

Tony McNulty: I do not think that there is any intention of introducing proscription orders over the recess. In the confines of the assorted Terrorism Acts, an order subject to the affirmative procedure has to come before the House, so there will not be any proscription over the recess, unless the second element of the legislation is used. That element allows orders subject to the negative procedure to be laid regarding organisations that are clearly successor groups to an organisation that has previously been proscribed. I can thus give the right hon. Gentleman a broad assurance.
	The House will know that the order before us lists four organisations that we believe are concernedin terrorism: al-Ghurabaa, the Saved Sect, the Baluchistan Liberation Army and Teyrebaz Azadiye Kurdistan, which, if I may, I will call TAK from now on. Al-Ghurabaa and the Saved Sect are being proscribed under the new glorification provisions, and this is the first time that those powers have been used. The Baluchistan Liberation Army and TAK are directly involved in acts of terrorism.
	When deciding whether to make an order proscribing a group, several additional factors are taken into account. They were published in 2001. The factors are the nature and scale of an organisation's activities, the specific threat that it poses to the United Kingdom, the specific threat that it poses to British nationals overseas, the organisation's presence in the United Kingdom, and the need to support other members of the international community in their fight against terrorism.
	The proscription of an organisation is a very serious matter, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, East (Mr. Marshall) suggested. It means that the organisation is outlawed in the UK and that it is illegal for it to operate here. The Terrorism Act makes it a criminal offence to belong to, or invite support for, a proscribed organisation. It is also an offence to arrange a meeting that will support or further the activities of a proscribed organisation, or that will be addressed by someone who belongs to such an organisation. Finally, a person commits an offence if he or she wears clothing, or carries or displays articles, that provide a reasonable suspicion that he or she is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation.
	I now come on to my hon. Friend's point. It is important to note that any organisation that is proscribed, or anyone who is affected by a proscription, can appeal directly to the Home Secretary for the organisation to be de-proscribed. If that is refused, the applicant can appeal to the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission. There is thus a twofold process whereby organisations on the list can be de-proscribed.
	Given the wide-ranging impact of proscription, the Home Secretary takes the decision to propose a group for proscription only after a thorough review of all relevant material. That includes open-source and intelligence material, as well as advice that reflects consultations across Government and with law enforcement agencies.
	I believe that proscribing the four groups in the order will send a clear message that the United Kingdom continues to take its role in fighting terrorism seriously. We all know that the nature of terrorism has changed. The structures used are more fluid and international, and there are organisations that recruit and radicalise, as well as those that actually commit terrible acts of violence against innocent civilians. Each day we see more and more examples of the enormous challenge that we face.

Tony McNulty: There is, so I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's comment. He will know that an order subject to the negative procedure is before the House today. The PKK is a proscribed Kurdistan group. We believe that we have sufficient information that suggests that the two groups that are the subject of that order—KADEK and Kongra Gele Kurdistan—are simply successor groups to the PKK, which is why they can be proscribed simply by such an order under section 22 of the Terrorism Act 2006, unless the order is prayed against during the 21 days, or whatever it is, for which it is laid. We rightly included that provision in the Act because we had evidence of such activity.
	It is against the broad background that I outlined that we must consider all steps that we can take to protect our citizens from terrorism. That involves difficult decisions and judgments, but the overriding responsibility must be to protect the public. Partof that is about making it harder for organisationsthat are involved in terrorism—both directly and indirectly—to operate, and that is simply what proscription does.
	Al-Ghurabaa and the Saved Sect use the internet as their main medium. The two organisations are closely connected and both are successor organisations to al-Muhajiroon. They use the internet to attack the values of our society and praise those who want to use violence for ideological aims. They spread a message that is aimed at the young and vulnerable, which indirectly encourages them to emulate previous terrorist acts.

Mike Hancock: Can the Minister give us details of any charges that have been brought against individuals who havebeen involved with organisations since they have been proscribed? Have any of those charges led to successful convictions?

Tony McNulty: No, there would not. No matter how many organisations are on the order, they are treated under law as separate and distinct organisations, sothe de-proscription would apply simply to the one organisation, rather than to the whole list.
	As I was saying, there is material on the al-Ghurabaa website that says
	'kill those who insult Mohammed'
	and
	"we do believe in Jihad, we do believe in violence, we do believe in terrorizing the enemy of Allah".
	It talks about Osama bin Laden being a lion and says that his opponents are
	"treading a downhill path of destruction and humiliation".
	It speaks of the USA being
	"forced to kneel down towards him".
	The Saved Sect churns out similar propaganda. Let us be clear: those are examples not of freedom of speech, but of the abuse of those freedoms. They are insidious attacks on the broad values that the overwhelming majority of communities in this country hold dear.
	The case of the Baluchistan Liberation Army and TAK is different, as those organisations are directly concerned with terrorism, and have claimed responsibility for some dreadful atrocities. For example, the Baluchistan Liberation Army has claimed responsibility for attacks going back to at least 2004, including the murder of Chinese engineers in February 2006 and nine bombings of railway stations in 2005. TAK has also claimed responsibility for attacks in Turkey since 2004, including a bomb attack on an internet café in Istanbul. Although those organisations are not based in the United Kingdom, they pose a threat to our citizens, as was demonstrated by the tragic death of British citizens in a bomb attack by TAK in the Turkish resort of Kusadasi in 2005.

Tony McNulty: I take the hon. Gentleman's point, but in the context of the order, there is clear evidence against TAK, and there is already substantive evidence against the PKK. The other two organisations that we propose to proscribe in an order under the negative procedure are simply successors to the PKK. If a body is not a terrorist organisation in terms, as defined in various Acts and in the judgment and review ofthe Government, it will not appear on a list for proscription.

Patrick Mercer: I thank the Minister for his statement and for giving us the facility to discuss the order before we came to the House today.
	The measure is apposite, bearing in mind that this Thursday exactly a year ago we were in the middle of another wave of terrorist attacks that, had they been successful, would, I suspect, have focused our minds much more closely even than the attacks of 7 July. On the next day—22 July—those attacks were followed by a series of tragic events that are close to the Government's thoughts at the moment. We would do well to remember that many of the organisations that we are talking about today were heavily involved in the events of last year.
	May I begin by saying that the Opposition are delighted with the four names on the order to which the Minister has referred? We certainly support the Government's proscription of those organisations, but I should be grateful if the Minister would kindly answer one or two questions. I shall first deal with the first two organisations that have been proscribed today. Both al-Ghurabaa and the Saved Sect—also known as the Saviour Sect—have been proscribed, but theyare remnants of al-Muhajiroun. What are the Government's views about other remnants of that organisation, such as the followers of Ahl Us-Sunnah Wal-Jammaa'ah, the Muballigh, the Islamic Thinkers Society and the Society of Muslim Lawyers, which is not the same as the Association of Muslim Lawyers?
	Omar Bakri Muhammad, who established al-Muhajiroun, said:
	"Al-Muhajiroun has many organs which are active within society under its leadership. These organs specialize in different fields, such as: the Society of Muslim Lawyers, the Society of Converts to Islam, the Society of Muslim Parents, the London School of Shari'ah, the Shari'ah Court of the UK, the Society of Muslim Students, the Islamic World League, the Muslim Cultural Society and the Party of the Future."
	How will the Government cope with that? As soon as organisations are banned, they change their name. The same happened with the IRA—first, there was the Official IRA, then the provisionals, then a series of other splinter organisations. How will we cope with that? Can the Minister help me on that point? As soon as one organisation is banned, it springs up under another name. That is not a criticism; I am merely asking for information about how that can be controlled.

Patrick Mercer: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. The answer is that there are any number. As soon as I name one of those organisations, it will rename itself. As soon as it is proscribed, it will spring up under another guise. As I said, that is not a criticism of the Government; it is a merely question about how they intend to deal with it.
	Hezbollah is much in the news at present. Will the Government explain why the external security organisation of Hezbollah is proscribed, whereas Hezbollah's political arm and its guerrilla forces in south Lebanon are not proscribed? I shall quote from the Minister for the Middle East, although his words make the situation no clearer. He stated in March 2006:
	"We are not aware of any involvement by Hizballah in terrorist activity in southern Lebanon. However, we remain very concerned by Hizballah's support for terrorist activity withinthe Occupied Territories."—[ Official Report, 22 March 2006; Vol. 444, c. 422W.]
	Can the Minister please explain why we deal with one half of the organisation in one way, and the other half in another way?
	Why is Abu Hamza's old group, the Supporters of Sharia, not proscribed? What is the Government's view on them? From their chat rooms, it is clear that they are a thinly disguised front for al-Qaeda in the United Kingdom. What are the Government's views on Tablighi Jama'at? That organisation has plans to build a £100 million mosque in east London that will apparently accommodate 10,000 worshippers. French intelligence is deeply worried by that organisation, claiming that 80 per cent. of Islamist fundamentalists in France come from TJ and calling it the "antechamber of fundamentalism". How will we cope with that? Do the Government propose to allow the group's recruiting methods to continue? Are we to give succour to it? Again, I simply require information from the Government. What about the Student Islamic Movement of India inside the United Kingdom? We have already touched on that. What are the Government's views on the comments of Lord Carlile about the de-proscription of Mujaheddin-e-Khalq?
	I return to the point that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) made about Hizb ut-Tahrir, or HUT for short. A few days ago the Home Secretary told us how pleased and delighted he was with the way that Project CONTEST was developing. That is the Government's anti-terrorist strategy, which revolves around four streams of thought—four streams of action. Will the Government explain how HUT fits into both the "protect" and the "prepare" streams of thought of project CONTEST? I remind the House that the Prime Minister's delivery unit said of Project CONTEST that activity in the project was not connected or coherent, it asked who was in charge, and it said that Project CONTEST measures meeting and reports, not real world impact. The Home Secretary denied all that.
	HUT is banned from many Arab countries, the former Soviet Union and Germany, yet London appears to be its headquarters. Its UK branch was founded by Omar Bakri Muhammad, who founded al-Muhajiroun, and it talks endlessly about anti-Muslim integration. On 5 August 2005, the Prime Minister said that HUT would be proscribed. Why has it not been? If we have Project CONTEST, a strategy for counter-terrorism, which the Home Secretary tells us is in good shape—although the Prime Minister's delivery unit says it is not fit for purpose—can the Minister please explain to me why the Prime Minister's words have not been honoured?

Andrew Dismore: We are getting a little off the point. The serious issue is how we keep up with the continual name changes of organisations that are effectively the same organisations as those that were proscribed. If they have the same website, address or telephone number, that is relatively easy to follow. If the same people are involved, it becomes more difficult because many of them have aliases and noms de guerre. When we look them up on the internet, we find a series of different names for the same people. Moreover, they are not organisations like political parties with membership lists, membership cards and so forth, but loose associations, which makes it that much harder.
	The explanatory memorandum, which gives the reasons why Al-Ghurabaa and the Saved Sect should be proscribed, uses somewhat measured and temperate language that understates the nature of the organisations with which we are dealing. One of Al-Ghurabaa's key activists, Anjem Choudary, was the prime mover behind the demonstration outside the Danish embassy and was recently convicted of not giving proper notice to the police. I regret to say that he received a mere slap on the wrist, which no doubt encourages rather than discourages people in those circumstances. Several trials for more serious offences are still outstanding in relation to that demonstration. The rabid anti-Semitism of those groups is notorious. One need only look at some of the statements made on the demonstration, such as, "Butcher those who mock Islam", or "Kill those who insult Islam", and the people dressed as suicide bombers, to apprehend the nature of Al-Ghurabaa.
	The Saved Sect is probably the most direct line back to Al-Muhajiroun. It was formerly known as the Saviour Sect, but changed its name. That is why I mentioned name changes. Sometimes the new name is dissimilar, but it is often very similar. People associated with the Saved Sect included Mizanur Rahman, who demanded the beheading of those who insult Islam at the Danish embassy demonstration, and Islam Uddin, who called the Jewish people
	"the most disgusting and greedy people on earth".
	Many others have made similar statements. I would like particularly to highlight Abu Yahya. When I first started this campaign back in 1998, I remember him speaking on the Radio 4 "Today" programme, proclaiming the jihadist message and boasting of the terrorist training that he had received in Afghanistan.
	My key concern is the fact that so many organisations, not only those listed by the hon. Member for Newark, have not been brought within the realms of proscription. I particularly want to raise the question of Hezbollah. The military wing of Hezbollah is proscribed, but the political wing is not. Hezbollah itself does not make any distinction between those two entities and operates as one single organisation.

David Heath: Under the terms of the order, which does not specify a section, I doubt whether a court would put such a narrow construction on the Minister's words, but we are right to express concern.
	Is the Minister confident that the internet sites, which seem to be his principal concern, will be closed down as a consequence of proscription or will they simply move to an overseas base and continue as before? If proscription does not achieve the primary objective of closing down those sites, it has failed as a mechanism.
	It is a matter of natural justice that proscribed organisations should be regularly reviewed toascertain whether the proscription remains necessary and in order. The hon. Member for Glasgow, East (Mr. Marshall) mentioned the People's Mujaheddin of Iran. There have been concerns about whether it should be proscribed. I make no comment on that apart from saying that I hope that it is subject to review. I especially hope that new assessments are made at the time of negative resolution orders for successor organisations. Rather than simply assessing whether an organisation is a successor body, we should assess whether it has the same principles and adherents as the previous organisation.

Andrew MacKinlay: I refer to the explanatory memorandums that were before the House in 2001. Those documents were fuller and amplified the Government's case—— especially on the organisations to be proscribed and their activities in the United Kingdom——more than the current explanatory memorandum, which contains nothing to the same effect. I regret that. I do not want to belabour the point, as we fully realise that there are constraints on the Home Secretary. However, the memorandum could have been fuller and in line with what has been before the House previously. The Home Secretary asks hon. Members to trust his judgment, and I do, but that underlines the point that the Government need to review regularly the organisations that they have proscribed.
	The Minister said in his opening remarks, and reminded us a few moments ago, that people can apply to be de-proscribed, but he himself cannot escape his duty to keep proscribed organisations under constant review. He did not refer to that and I regret it. If I could have his attention for a moment, it would make my journey to Westminster today worth while. I listened carefully to his comments, all of which were valid, but the Home Secretary has a duty to keep matters under review, especially given that the organisation to which the hon. Members for Newark (Patrick Mercer) and for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) referred—the PMOI, also known as Mujaheddin-e-Khalq—was proscribed in 2001. The British Government have acknowledged that the organisation has not been involved in any military or terrorist activity since then. In 2001, they acknowledged that it was not involved in any such activities in the United Kingdom. There must be carrot and stick. If an organisation fulfils the criterion of being a lawful organisation in the United Kingdom, Her Majesty's Government should make some response.
	The Minister was right to say that he could not comment on the PMOI's application, which is before the Home Secretary, because the Home Secretary and the Minister will act in a quasi-judicial way. However, that does not stop me making points to underlinethe importance of considering such matters. As a backdrop, the Prime Minister referred to the Iranian Government this week from the Dispatch Box as the exporters of terrorism. Their opponents are trying to stand up to them, just as General de Gaulle kept the flame flickering while in exile.
	The Minister for the Middle East is chuntering under his breath, but I hope that he will do me the courtesy of listening to me for one more minute. Even if he thinks that Andrew Mackinlay is talking rubbish, the case that I am advancing has been articulated much better by people such as Lord Archer of Sandwell, a former Labour Solicitor-General; David Waddington, a former Conservative Home Secretary; Lord Fraser, a former Conservative Lord Advocate; and Lord Carlile of Berriew, the person who has been charged by the Government with making an objective assessment of these proscriptions. In Lord Carlile's most recent report, he flagged up the fact that the Government should reflect again on the PMOI, or the MeK, as it is also known.
	I wish that the Ministers would recognise that some of us do trust them, but that we expect a quid pro quo. We, the custodians of liberties, need to be satisfied that they are reviewing past decisions that were dictated by a request from the Iranian Government to the then Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, which was then conveyed to my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), to proscribe the PMOI. Some of us think that that decision was flawed, and we want reassurance that there will now be some objectivity, and that the organisation will not continue to be proscribed merely to appease the rotten regime in Tehran.

Michael Gove: I congratulate the Minister and the Government on proscribing al-Ghurabaa and the Saved Sect. Those organisations are the successors to al-Muhajiroun, whose founder, Omar Bakri Mohammad, was involved in the commission and preparation of terrorist acts and recruitment for jihad. He trained young men, whom he sent to fight in Chechnya, Afghanistan and Jordan. He was also directly responsible for the recruitment and training of two young Britons, Asif Mohammad Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, whom he sent to their deaths in a suicide mission in Israel. His ideology is foul, and his organisation deserves to be proscribed. Its successor organisations also deserve to be proscribed, and I congratulate the Government on doing so.
	I regret, however, that Hizb ut-Tahrir is not on the list of organisations being proscribed today. Lastyear, the Prime Minister outlined the case for the proscription of Hizb ut-Tahrir, and, as so often happens when the Prime Minister talks about Islamist terrorism, I found myself wholeheartedly agreeing with him. Why have the Government not proscribed Hizb ut-Tahrir? Did the Foreign Office and the Home Office fall out over this matter, as has been reported in the  New Statesman? Will the Minister specify the nature of the discussions between those Departments on this matter, and let us know why that proscription has not proceeded?
	Given that Hizb ut-Tahrir has been proscribed in Germany by Otto Schily, the interior Minister in an SPD-Green Administration, the proscription of the organisation would hardly be a reactionary move. Indeed, the desire for its proscription is endorsed by all those who believe that liberal, multi-ethnic democracies need to be protected from extremists who fly under flags of convenience.
	I suspect that I might be rare in the House—although I note that the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway) is here—in that I have had the privilege, if that is the word, of being invited to address a Hizb ut-Tahrir meeting in the past. I did not know that Hizb ut-Tahrir had organised the meeting when I was invited to address it. Because I did not know that, and because Hizb ut-Tahrir operates under a cloak of secrecy, I was rendered complicit in an exercise in radicalising young Muslim men. I saw how the organisation operated, and how it sought to divide young Muslim men from the rest of our fellow citizens. I recognise that it acts as a conveyor belt to extremist activity, as the Prime Minister has pointed out.
	The hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) pointed out that Hizb ut-Tahrir bore similarities to Trotskyist organisations, and so it does, in that it operates under a number of identities in order to achieve its totalitarian aims. However, it is far more dangerous than Trotskyist organisations ever were in this country.
	The Prime Minister made a speech to the Foreign Policy Centre earlier this year, in which he said:
	"The extremism"—
	which we all need to counter—
	"may have started through religious doctrine and thought, but soon, in offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood, supported by Wahabi extremists and taught in some of the madrassahs in the middle east and Asia, an ideology was born and exported around the world."
	For those who do not know the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, I shall spell it out briefly. Its ideology is Allah—

Tony McNulty: I shall deal with the points raised in this very reasonable debate that were specifically about the order, rather than the assorted attempts—however well intentioned—to reopen the wonderful long debates that we had just before the election, which involved sittings lasting until 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning and losing a day's business in the House. Wonderful memories! Nor am I going to go down the memory lane depicted by my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) when he talked about Trotskyist groups. I shall say no more about that, but anyone who wants to talk about Trotskyist groups in the 1970s—with or without my own inclusion—should see me afterwards.
	In relation to some of the specific points about process, I take the point about the first order that listed some 21 organisations. There was some urgency, once we secured the power to proscribe, to get that initial series of organisations on the statute books asquickly as possible. On reflection, merely an hourand a half—locked as we were into our limited parliamentary procedures—on an order that proscribed 21 organisations was probably not the best way to conduct business. I will take that point back to the Home Office for consideration.

Margaret Beckett: I have already given way four or five times and many Members want to speak. I propose to make further progress with my speech before giving way again. Otherwise, I am mindful that the entire debate will run out of time even before I—let alone anyone else—have finished speaking.
	I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin)—I know that he will accept my assurance, however much he disagrees with what I am doing or saying—that I am striving in every way I can to act effectively to bring about the position that he desires. I will continue to act in the way that I believe is most likely to be effective, which is not always the way that people would wish me to act.
	As the whole House knows, Hezbollah does not act alone. Behind it and, I am afraid, lending it support and direction are Syria and Iran. Syria finances Hezbollah and facilitates the transfer of weapons, including thousands of missiles that appear to be supplied by Iran. Against that difficult and dangerous background, the focus of the international community must surely be on what action can be taken to bring about a durable ceasefire. First and foremost, while attempts are made to create the conditions for a ceasefire, the international community must strive to ease the suffering of civilian populations caught up in the fighting.

Margaret Beckett: I am well aware of both the assertion that that is part of the problem and the concern that such activities cause on all sides. I take entirely my hon. Friend's position—

David Heath: Many of us recall the admirably balanced statement made by the Minister for the Middle East on Monday when he said that
	"we must impress on the Israelis the international rules of conflict. When civilians are killed and the terrible phrase "collateral damage" is used to describe what is seen as a legitimate attack, the impression given across the middle eastand the world is not a good one."
	He also said:
	"We certainly expect Israel to abide by international law and we are totally opposed to collective punishment."—[ Official Report, 17 June 2006; Vol. 449, c. 28-32.]
	Is that still the Government's position, and, if so, will the Foreign Secretary say so out loud? Otherwise, the great fear is that disproportionate action by Israel will invite exactly the same sort of response in future years by terrorists who wish to promote instability in the region.

Margaret Beckett: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman paying tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Middle East, because he did extremely well on Monday. Of course, the views and concerns he expressed remain the view of the Government. I will go further and say to the hon. Gentleman what I have said in several forums, including to representatives of the Government of Israel, that it seems that, apart from in very few quarters, there is a really widespread recognition and acceptance that these particular events—and their scale, with regard to Lebanon especially—were precipitated by a wanton act of destruction by Hezbollah. It is a very unusual position for Israel to be in for almost everybody to say that there was no excuse for Hezbollah's action and it made an already bad situation worse. That offers the Government and the people of Israel a window of opportunity to make their case about the nature and scale of the attack and the undermining that they are facing. In the many conversations that I have had with representatives of that Government, I have made the point that Israel could close that window of opportunity, which would be a pity.

Margaret Beckett: If I may, I shall make a little progress first.
	Sixty-three of the most vulnerable British nationals were evacuated on Monday 17 July and a further 175 people were evacuated by HMS Gloucester on Tuesday. Yesterday, a further 863 people left on HMS York and HMS Gloucester, but today we hope to evacuate even larger numbers. HMS Bulwark, which was expected to dock in Beirut this morning, can take up to 2,000 people, and we have other ships standing by. Our teams in Cyprus have arranged for those who wish to continue back to the United Kingdom to fly home, and where necessary we have chartered special aircraftto do that. We are co-ordinating closely across government to support those who arrive back in the United Kingdom.
	We are also aware that approximately 100 British nationals and British dual nationals are still in south Lebanon. We are in touch with some of them and are trying to contact others, but at the moment it is too dangerous to travel south to try to get them out. A United Nations ferry has been allowed into Tyre and has picked up many foreign nationals; we are urgently seeking to confirm how many of them are British nationals. Ten British nationals left Sidon yesterday in a bus convoy and should be evacuated to Cyprus today. We are working with our EU partners to get all EU nationals who want to leave out of south Lebanon as quickly and safely as possible.

Margaret Beckett: I am sorry, but I must finish.
	The current crisis in the middle east and the ongoing negotiations with Iran provide the international community with huge and pressing security challenges, but, of course, we face other such challenges in that region and across the globe. The Government remain committed to working with our partners across the broad agenda of international concerns.
	In Afghanistan, we are helping the Afghan Government to extend the rule of law across their country. In Iraq, we are giving our full support to the people and to their elected Government as they struggle to build a better future in the face of terrible violence. In Darfur, we are leading calls for the deployment of a UN force and we are supporting the African Union force. On Tuesday, we confirmed that we would provide the African Union with a further£20 million. As I mentioned earlier, the Security Council has taken firm and unanimous action on North Korea in response to its testing of long-range missiles.
	Today, an active and engaged foreign policy does not just mean dealing with so-called global security. It also means dealing with the global insecurity that can exacerbate international tensions and stresses, so we are pushing hard for an ambitious outcome to the Doha development round. We welcomed the renewed commitment by the EU, the US and the G20 at the recent G8 summit to overcome the remaining obstacles to agreement and, crucially, to show more flexibility. There is more at stake than the economic well-being of developed and developing countries. There is the fate of the world's poorest and most vulnerable and the credibility of the multilateral system as a whole.
	I am also determined that the Foreign Office will be at the forefront of a step change in the international diplomacy on climate change. Global warming is one of the greatest threats that we face as an international community, and progress on it is needed with immediacy and urgency. Again, there was some progress at the G8, including recognition of theneed for a clear goal to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations. The Gleneagles dialogue meeting in Mexico will be the next step in taking that forward.
	I began today by saying that these are grave and difficult times for the international community. I doubt that a single person in the House would disagree with that, however much there may be disagreement on other issues. In the current crisis in the middle east, it is not just the fate of those countries most directly involved and their peoples that is at issue. Rather, what is at stake is any prospect for a lasting peace in the region and with it the wider security of the international community as a whole. What stands out with utter clarity is that any or all of these different issues and events can be addressed, let alone resolved, only if we seek the maximum amount of common ground and co-operation from the international community as a whole. That is what the Government have sought to do and will continue to do.

William Hague: The situation is difficult and dispiriting. People will look once again to the generosity of the British and other taxpayers and donors. I believe that that generosity will continue in the future but the situation is immensely dispiriting, which brings me to the immediate issue of what can be done without delay to bring an end to the current bloodshed.
	The right of Israel to defend itself, like any country, is clear. Its desire severely to damage the ability of Hezbollah to attack the Israeli civilian population is understandable. As the Prime Minister pointed out yesterday, calling for an unconditional ceasefire from Israel is futile, because there is unlikely to be a ceasefire unless the kidnapped soldiers are returned, rocket attacks on Haifa cease and some hope is provided that the international community will help Lebanon to have a stable future. However, it is not clear that it is in the interests of Israel, let alone of anyone else, to delay for one moment the effort to bring about a ceasefire under those or any other conditions.
	In response to the question put by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), I think that we can say that elements of the Israeli response are disproportionate, including the attacks on Lebanese army units, the loss of civilian life and essential infrastructure, and the enormous damageto the capacity of the Lebanese Government. A disproportionate Israeli response will damage the Israeli cause in the long term, even if it was partly brought about, as the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) said, by the callous stationing of military units in civilian areas.

Julian Lewis: Doesmy right hon. Friend agree that the Lebanese Government's case would be immensely strengthened if they publicly disowned the activities of Hezbollah and requested the international community to take the action necessary to contain Hezbollah that they evidently cannot undertake themselves?

William Hague: Absolutely. The hon. Gentleman anticipates my next point and underlines the urgency of the case from the point of view of the international community. It is by no means clear that continued bombardment of Hezbollah areas will result in military success for Israel. The idea that it is somehow in the interests of Israel or of a longer-term solution for the fighting to go on for several more weeks may prove to be woefully misguided. The removal of Hezbollah from southern Lebanon and the implementation of UN resolution 1559 will require a political process ofsome kind, which requires a successful Lebanese Government who can work with the Israeli Government.

William Hague: Let me make a little more progress, or my speech will become as long as the Foreign Secretary's, understandably, became.
	I do not underestimate the immense difficulties for anyone trying to bring about an agreed ceasefire in a conflict where one party is a terrorist organisation whose primary links are to countries such as Iran and Syria, which are already at loggerheads with mostof the international community. However, it was dispiriting that the G8 summit at St. Petersburg, despite the reference to the UN Secretary-General of which the Foreign Secretary spoke, produced so little unity and such an apparent shortage of the will to take immediate action. The Prime Minister's famous "Yo" conversation with President Bush meant that the headlines were once again about those two leaders being too close together, when the real story was surely that the G8 leaders as a body were not remotely close enough to each other. The evident failure of the leaders of countries with a huge influence in the middle east region, including France and Russia, to overcome their differences even to the extent of being able to take some co-ordinated initiative was the most enduring impression of the G8 summit.

William Hague: My hon. Friend will forgive me—even though I may have some sympathy with what he says, we are not going to resolve that issue in today's debate. That is not the debate's role. Our priority is the immediate crisis in the middle east, in which EU representatives and others may have a constructiverole to play.

William Hague: I do not want to apportion blame about the G8. I am making a general point. The United States has enormous influence over Israel, but France has enormous influence in the Arab world and Russia has enormous influence when it comes to Iran. There is a general argument to be made about the ability, willingness and capacity of the leaders of those countries to work together on something such as this. The finger cannot be pointed just at the United States.
	Greater co-ordinated action, not just in the UN, is now needed. I hope that the Government can tell us more about the apparent plans of the US Secretary of State to travel to the middle east, about whether there is any possibility of the Prime Minister travelling there, as he clearly offered to go in his conversation with President Bush, and about whether the announced visit of the French Prime Minister to Lebanon is in any way co-ordinated with British and American diplomatic efforts.
	It is also important to hear much more aboutthe proposal floated by the Government for an international force to act as a buffer in southern Lebanon. We should have an open mind about such a proposal, but not forget the immense difficulties faced by such a force in the 1980s, which resulted in heavy loss of life and mounting resentment against the west. To avoid the limitations of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, such a force would have to have a robust mandate, operate on a large scale, and be well equipped and made up of good quality troops. Given that the British Army is stretched to the limit, and American forces could not fulfil a peacekeeping role in this context, it is not clear where those forces are to come from. I hope that, when the Minister winds up, he will be able to say more about the discussions taking place with our allies, particularly France, and about whether these proposals are being worked up in detail and whether it is understood that, to be useful, such a force would have to be involved in actually disarming Hezbollah—obviously a difficult undertaking.
	We all hope that the meeting of the UN Security Council will help to produce a strong impetus for a co-ordinated approach from the world's leading powers—particularly one involving Russia and France, for the reasons that I have just given. We all fully realise that the Government cannot bring about such co-ordination on their own, but the efforts of the British Government in calling for it should be vigorous and clear. So far, the failure to produce an international initiative is ominously reminiscent of the early stages of the Balkan crisis of the 1990s. One of the reasons why this is so worrying is that the crisis in Lebanon is likely to make the other problems of the middle east harder to deal with. Those problems, taken together, are becoming by far the single greatest foreign policy challenge for us and our allies.
	It should be a sobering thought for all of uswho deal with foreign affairs—in government or opposition—that instability in the middle east could become seriously worse in the coming years. Whoever wins the next election in this country or the United States could easily face a nuclear-armed Iran, continued violence in Afghanistan, a still unstable Iraq, a stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians and major instability in one or more of our major Arab allies all at the same time. All those conflicts have the potential to feed into, or to be hijacked by, forms of international terrorism.

William Hague: The British Government have to work closely with our allies, including our American allies. There should be a distinctive British approach to the middle east and, despite the limitations of a short debate, I shall mention that briefly in a few moments.
	I was making the point that such a combination of factors presents one of the most alarming outlooks for world peace that we have seen in decades. Even though this week's urgent news is from Lebanon, it is thus vital to keep in mind the many other components of the darkening scene in the middle east and to develop a clear strategy for the coming years. As the Foreign Secretary did, I want to touch on a few of those other matters.
	On Israeli-Palestinian relations, there is an urgent need to find a route back to a genuine and equitable peace process on the basis of a two-state solution. That clearly requires the new Palestinian Authority to meet the international community's demands to renounce violence, to recognise Israel and to accept previous agreements. It also requires Israel to preserve the Palestinian institutions and infrastructure that will form the basis of a Palestinian state. The security barrier that was erected by Israel, which many of us have visited, has, for the moment, brought greater security for Israelis, but it is now clearer than ever that long-term peace and security for Israel can come only through agreement with its neighbours. When the Minister for the Middle East winds up the debate, will he indicate whether the Government can tell us anything more about any progress at all on such matters? Can anything more be done to ensure that the necessary flow of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people actually takes place?
	In parallel, we have the continuing stand-off over Iran's nuclear programme, about which the Foreign Secretary spoke. We certainly welcome the decision to return the issue to the Security Council. Britain has quite rightly been at the forefront of efforts to generate and maintain consensus over Iran. We hope that the united front that the permanent members of the Security Council have shown to date will be maintained now that we are approaching a critical juncture in our dealings with Iran. Perhaps the Minister can tell us whether we can be confident of the robust support of all members of the Security Council at this stage. Have Russia and China indicated at all their willingness to support a resolution that would pave the way for meaningful sanctions, if necessary, should Iranian intransigence continue?
	At the same time, we face a very difficult situation in Iraq, with the UN assessing the number of civilian deaths as 6,000 in May and June alone. The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence, the right hon. Memberfor East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr. Ingram), has conceded that the threat level in Basra has increased, and the Prime Minister recently stated that Iranian armaments have caused the deaths of British soldiers. It would be a disaster to do anything now that would make the job of the democratically elected Iraqi Government more difficult. The one encouraging factor is that they have been able to take control of larger areas of their own country, but are Ministers satisfied that there are sufficient patrols along the Iran-Iraq border and that the security situation in southern Iraq will not deteriorate further? As my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Wallace) asked the Foreign Secretary, if we believe that Iran is sponsoring terrorist attacks on our troops, what action is to be taken? There is no indication that the Iranian ambassador has been called in. What the Prime Minister says publicly and the Foreign Office does in relation to ambassadors should be consistent, so we hope that it will be in the coming weeks.
	Simultaneously, in Afghanistan—if I may briefly mention that subject—the Government have admitted that British troops in Helmand have met stiffer resistance than was anticipated. More troops have been sent, as we know, but given the serious possibility that further troops will be required for the Afghanistan mission to succeed, would it not be a good idea for the Government now to make the case to our NATO allies that the consequences of failure in Afghanistan would be catastrophic, and that a much larger contribution may be required from the rest of NATO?
	Yesterday, in a Parliamentary answer to the shadow Defence Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox), the Secretary of State for Defence said:
	"Neither the Taliban, nor the range of illegally armed groups, currently pose a threat to the long-term stability of Afghanistan."—[ Official Report, 18 July 2006; Vol. 449, c. 342W.]
	It would be interesting to know whether that assessment, which seems rather complacent, is shared by Foreign Office Ministers. Although an enormous amount of good work has been done in Afghanistan, the overall picture after five years is still of a country with weak institutions, widespread corruption and a deteriorating security environment. It is of paramount importance to give renewed vigour and co-ordination to the international reconstruction effort. We have advocated the appointment of an international co-ordinator of such efforts with a powerful mandate. The Government have said that that is a constructive suggestion, but I am not aware that anything has been done about it, even though, given the persistent reports of poor co-ordination, waste and corruption, the matter would seem to be of the highest urgency.
	All those issues have common threads, which I shall draw together. Time and again, the same countries deliberately work against our efforts to secure peace in the middle east. The same grievances of western bias and unfair policies are voiced by parties in the different conflicts. All those grievances require a firm, clear and hard-headed approach from the British Government, but the fact that there are so many interlocking conflicts underscores the need for all of us in this country to develop a clear and coherent foreign policy towards the middle east, and to pursue it consistently over many years. Our genuine influence in the middle east is at a low ebb, and no Foreign Secretary can be satisfied with that. That is a great challenge for an incoming Foreign Secretary, so I hope that the right hon. Lady will take it up.
	Such a strategy for the middle east must include serious economic and security initiatives, accompanied by a serious effort to raise and sustain the level ofour contacts throughout the region. A glance at our relations with the Gulf states illustrates the point and the need for the strategy. Countries such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates could play key roles in our dealings with Iran and in the future of Iraq. They are our natural allies, yet in nine years of highly active foreign policy the Prime Minister has not visited those countries. There may be much more that we could do to help them with their regional security framework, and there is almost certainly more that we could do to boost trade and economic ties. There is a great deal more that we could do to foster links between Parliaments and educational institutions, to promote cultural links and to encourage civil society and co-operation on terrorism, religious radicalism, climate change and nuclear proliferation.
	Today, I received a written answer from the Foreign Secretary saying that if any security initiative in the Gulf is to be successful, leadership must come from within the region. That may be true, but much more could be done to stimulate such an initiative. Maintaining contacts in the region should be one of the highest priorities for the Foreign Office. The Prime Minister's personal envoy to the middle east should not be his fundraiser, however well intentioned he may be; I put it to the Foreign Secretary—this is intended to be helpful—that the Prime Minister's personal envoy to the middle east should be the Foreign Secretary, relentlessly backed up by our ambassadors. Other instances of what could be done include elevating NATO's Mediterranean dialogue, which includes Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, to the level of genuine partnership in the broader region of the middle east. That could contribute to regional security, stability and so on—I could go on, but many other hon. Members wish to speak.
	Those measures and probably many more are required if the United Kingdom is to make diplomacy in the middle east a strong priority. We need to ensure that the machinery of government in our country is properly equipped and designed to deliver such a co-ordinated approach. Three weeks ago in the House of Lords, the noble Lord Owen, a former Foreign Secretary, delivered a speech that ought to be read by all hon. Members, in which he argued that the changes introduced by the Prime Minister to the way in which the Cabinet is involved in and informed about foreign and defence policy has contributed to a series of miscalculations. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short), who served in the Cabinet, is nodding at that.
	Lord Owen pointed out that the introduction of Cabinet secretariats inside No. 10 no longer serving the entire Cabinet led to other senior Ministers being denied access to the full flow of information coming back from Army commanders or from the Foreign Secretary to the Prime Minister, leading to issues not being evaluated and decisions not taken in a properly balanced way. Given the lack of planning for reconstruction in Iraq and the evolution of policies so far in relation to Afghanistan, such issues need to be addressed. Our armed forces have never let us down and it not acceptable if the operation of Government might do so.
	I believe that to drive reinvigorated and long-term policy of British engagement in the middle east is a major challenge for the Foreign Secretary, but it is one that she ought to take up, for we know full well that even when the immediate crisis has passed, the forces that precipitated that crisis will create many more and are becoming stronger all the time.

Mike Gapes: On behalf of those of us who follow foreign affairs closely, I begin by saying that the dedication and commitment of the British people who are helping to get our citizens out of Lebanon has rightly been praised in the debate. When the crisis is over, I hope that the Foreign Affairs Committee will look at the issue in the same way as we reviewed what was done after the tsunami and after Hurricane Katrina in the United States. The work that is done by many, many people in the crisis teams and in the region is often taken for granted, but they work long hours and incredibly hard, and we should recognise the role that they are playing.
	Much has been said by the Foreign Secretary about the origins of the present crisis and I shall not dwell on that. I shall focus on how we can move forward and out of the crisis. The situation is potentially extremely dangerous. One reason is that Syria and Iran are using Hezbollah as a proxy for their own political positions. Syria and Iran have the ability to tell Hezbollah to stop what it is doing. They have the ability to cut off its supply of weaponry and stop its funding and training camps. The question is what Syria and Iran will do.
	On the other side, we have seen the reaction by the Israeli Government, who are a new Government with a Prime Minister who has been in office only a short time and who does not have a military background, and a new Defence Minister who is a trade union leader, whose own town was attacked by rockets from Gaza for a considerable time and who feels, as I suspect the new Prime Minister does, that this is a test for him. The situation is extremely dangerous.
	I have had many conversations in the past few days with diplomats of a number of countries in the region. It is clear to me that there is a perception that neither Hezbollah nor the Israeli Government wish to end the crisis immediately. Hezbollah wishes to pursue it because it is part of its realignment of its strength in Lebanon and in the interests of Syria and Iran, and the Israeli Government have a policy and believe at this moment that they may be able to eliminate Hezbollah as a threat to Israel. Both positions are extremely dangerous.
	As has been said, one cannot eliminate a terrorist organisation that is living in a community by air attacks or military action. There must be a combination of military, political, diplomatic and economic action, and it is time that we started thinking about the other ways to reduce Hezbollah's influence among the Shi'a communities of southern Lebanon.
	Several Members, including the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer), referred to Hezbollah's global threat. Hezbollah has carried out terrorist actions not only in the middle east but elsewhere. Years ago, it attacked a Jewish cultural centre in Argentina. The Gulf states have been mentioned. There is deep concern in the Emirates and elsewhere in the Gulf about the potential threat that it poses to many other countries in the region.
	Before this crisis blew up, the Foreign Affairs Committee published a report on 2 July in which we highlighted, among other things, an international role played by the Iranians that is not helpful in several respects. We talked about their links to terrorist organisations and the way in which they could do more damage if the crisis over their nuclear programme deteriorates further. We are on the cusp of a very serious international situation that requires cool heads and diplomacy. It also requires our Government, the European Union Governments and the G8 Governments to work with Governments in the Arab world. At this moment, the Governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt are working desperately hard for diplomatic solutions. It is interesting that the statements made by Arab Governments in the region were very critical of Hezbollah and what it has done.

Mike Gapes: That would be very helpful, but,sadly, as we have seen in Iraq, there are elements internationally within the Muslim world that are trying to create a conflict between the two sides.
	While we are all focusing on this immediate crisis, other things are happening in the world. At this very moment, the Union of Islamic Courts militia in Somalia is marching towards Baidoa, which is the base of the transitional Government in Somalia. The UIC militia is backed, militarily and in other ways, by Eritrea. The transitional Government are backedby Ethopia. The BBC World Service reported at lunchtime that Ethiopian troops have moved into Somali territory around that area. There are potential dangers there. Although the UIC is an unusually broad organisation, it contains elements, including the speaker of the Shura Council, who are on the international list of terrorist organisations and have links with al-Qaeda.
	Somalia is on the other side of Saudi Arabia from the area that we are discussing. Nevertheless, there are several conflicts in the region, with Muslim-on-Muslim violence, Shi'a against Sunni violence, as in Iraq, and, on top of that, the ongoing, long-standing struggle of the Palestinian people for their own state while Israelis feel that there is a threat to their very existence through organisations such as Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas. We need cool heads and active engagement by the international community.
	That brings me to my final point. It seems that the United States Administration have at last decided to send the US Secretary of State to the region. It is at least a week too late, but if it happens this weekend, I hope that some influence, with the weight of the only global superpower, can be brought to bear on trying to solve and defuse this crisis. Last December, Condoleezza Rice played a positive role in the opening of the Rafah crossing. The Select Committee visited the region and Rafah. We saw the Italian-led carabinieri mission, with Romanian and Danish people policing the border between Rafah and Gaza that is so vital for the Palestinian people and their economy. Condoleezza Rice did a good job at that time. She has the ability and the political clout to play a big role now.
	I hope that the United States will not do what it did at the beginning of the Bush Administration. It should become actively engaged because we need not only a solution to the crisis in Lebanon, which is a humanitarian and political disaster, but a middle east solution, whereby we get back to the road map, with the two-state solution that so many of us want.

Fiona Mactaggart: My hon. Friend has spoken strongly about the capacity of the United States to make a difference. Does he believe thatthe message, which appears to have been heard internationally from the United States, that Israel can act with impunity, is one element that creates some of the risks?

Clare Short: I think we would all agree that all human beings should deplore the killing, injuries and destruction of infrastructure in Gaza, Lebanon and Israel. Leaders on all sides should note the warning from Louise Arbour, the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, who has a distinguished record as a judge in Canada and as an international prosecutor. She warned yesterday that the scale of the killing in Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories could involve war crimes. Hers is an authoritative voice, not to be swept aside. She made it clear that the obligation to protect civilians during hostilities was laid down in international criminal law, and concluded:
	"The scale of the killings in the region and their predictability could engage the personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control."
	That would of course include the leadership of Hezbollah, but it would also include the Government of Israel.
	I had the honour of working with Louise Arbour when she was an international prosecutor, trying to ensure that there was no impunity for those who had caused the genocide in Rwanda. She is a very considerable woman, and her analyses should be taken very seriously. I would love to think that leaders on all sides would be held accountable by the international community in the way that she suggests, and that if they were, the use of excessive force would be restrained; but we know from the record of the international community that that will not happen.
	Israel has been in breach of UN resolutions for many years. It has also breached international law in building settlements in the Palestinian territories, in building the wall—not on the 1967 boundary, but taking in a large amount of Palestinian land—in carrying out targeted killings, in kidnapping Palestinians including members of the Government and holding them without trial, and in killing large numbers of Palestinian civilians. We should deplore the killing of any civilian—indeed, the killing of any person—but the number of Palestinian deaths is much greater than the number of Israeli deaths, and the number of Lebanese deaths is much greater than the number of Israeli deaths.
	The way in which we talk suggests that we are saying that an Arab life is not as important as an Israeli life. That is profoundly wrong, but it is the balance of the discourse far too often, and it is the cause of the rage of the Arab and Muslim world. I also have no doubt that the massive killing of innocent Lebanese civilians and the destruction of infrastructure is so disproportionate that it too is a war crime, as was implied by the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Mr. Moore).
	What is the position of our Government? Doesit follow the analysis of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights? It does not; it follows what is called for by the United States inalways backing up Israeli Government policy. The US denounces Hezbollah and Hamas and supports Israel's right to defend itself in this way, and it blames Iran and Syria for Hezbollah's actions, thus spreading the fear of a widening military action and encouraging the use of irregular forces throughout this very dangerous region.
	In my view, our Government's policy is so unbalanced and so disrespectful of international law and of the equal human rights of all people in the region that it inflames the situation, inciting large numbers of angry young Arabs and Muslims to the conclusion that there is no political route to justice. We know from history that where that view prevails, there is an increase in support for the use of violence by irregular forces. In my view, UK policy is not just unbalanced and morally wrong, but totally counter-productive and likely to increase the problem of terrorism, even though it is supposed to be a central feature of our foreign policy to try to constrain that threat.
	There is, however, one point that the Prime Minister keeps making with which I agree. As soon as a ceasefire can be agreed to end the violence in Lebanon—it should be called for unequivocally and immediately, and Israel should not be allowed all this time to continue; it has obviously been licensed by the US Administration—it is essential to turn attention to the core problem that destabilises the middle east, whichis the unbearable suffering, oppression and impoverishment of the Palestinian people.
	The answer to that problem is a two-state solution based on 1967 boundaries, with east Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state. That proposal—accepted by the Palestine Liberation Organisation at Oslo and outlined in the road map, to which the Prime Minister constantly refers—is a solution favoured by the majority of Israeli and Palestinian people. Let us be clear about that; it is undoubtedly the way forward. It is perfectly clear from all the evidence and all the facts on the ground that Israel does not accept the right of the Palestinian people to a state based on the 1967 boundaries with east Jerusalem as its capital. The road map and the chance of a two-state solution is evaporating before our very eyes. The Prime Minister constantly refers to the road map, but does nothing to bolster it.
	Israel's wall—not based on the 1967 boundaries, but taking in large swathes of Palestinian land—has been declared illegal by the International Court of Justice, but nothing has been done about it. Israel's massive settlements in the occupied territories are illegal in international law. If we also take into account the network of roads, the constant destruction of Palestinian houses, the domination of water resources and the containment of Palestinians, preventing them from travelling across their territory or trading with the outside world, it is quite clear that the terrible impoverishment and constant humiliation of the Palestinian people has been systematically put in place so that Israel can impose a unilateral settlement, as former Prime Minister Sharon and now Prime Minister Olmert acknowledge. Israel wants the maximum territory with the minimum of Palestinian people within it.

Michael Ancram: It is difficult to speak in a debate like this without feeling a sense of sadness and despair. Here we are, talking about Israelis, Palestinians and Lebanese dying. I came to this House just after the Yom Kippur war in 1974 and we were talking about exactly the same thing then. It is difficult sometimes not to despair that the problem is intractable. I have never believed that and I hope that the House does not make the same mistake.
	I thought that the speeches by the Front Benchers were comprehensive and well balanced. The one by my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary was also more realistic, in that he accepted that some of what is happening is disproportionate. It is important that we are realistic in how we address this problem.
	I speak on this subject as a friend of Israel of very long standing and a friend of Palestine. When people say to me that I cannot be both, I say that if one believes in the two-state solution, one has to be both. We have to be able to say that we are not standing on the sidelines shouting abuse at one side or the other, as we so often do in this House, but that we want to be part of the solution and that, therefore, we are going to take an even-handed approach.
	I will discuss why I believe Israel's reaction to terrorism is justified, but when I consider the conflict and what is happening today I am also reminded that in all the conflicts in history military action has never resolved them. Military action has often helped to contain them, but in the end they have been resolved only by dialogue and negotiation. When we talk about the short term, it is no substitute in the middle east for returning to the negotiation without which there will be no immediate answer.
	I believe that the two-state solution is a workable outcome. I listened to what was said at Camp David and I read what was said at Taba. I have heard what has been said since then in response to the road map and the indications suggest it is possible to achieve a solution on the two-state basis. But that will happen only if there is mutual confidence on both sides of the argument—a belief in Israel that they can live secure from terror and attack within their own boundaries and a belief among the Palestinians that theirs will not be an oppressed and vassal state, but a real and viable state that can live properly alongside Israel. Without such confidence, the two-state solution will simply not come about.
	I turn to the present situation. I have no doubt about Israel's right to pursue terrorists who carry out acts of violence against it, whether from Gaza or by Hezbollah from Lebanon. In the current context there can beno doubt that the action of Hezbollah, which isan exclusively external terrorist organisation, was responsible for the beginning of this crisis and continues to light its fires. But Israel does not only have the right to pursue terrorists in order to protect its people. If a two-state solution is to be reached, Israelis must be confident that they will not find hostile states on their borders firing at will into Israel. Unless the Israeli Government of Ehud Olmert can show that withdrawal from the territories from which withdrawal must be made does not mean greater vulnerability, and that the terrorist challenge can be met, the two-state solution will be stillborn.
	I do not question the action that Israel is taking against Hamas and Hezbollah. I do not gainsay Israel's right to take proportionate action. But I am concerned and dismayed by what appears, to me at least, to be disproportionate action in Lebanon. Given modern intelligence and military technology, it must be possible to pursue terrorists on a surgical basis, knowing where the terrorist problem is and then rooting it out. We had to do that in our time in our own terrorist context; we did not blast communities on the basis that there might be terrorists there. It is absolutely essential that we say to our friends in Israel, who, after all, have one of the most sophisticated intelligence services in the world, that they, of all people, should be able to deal with this terrorist problem without creating a wider problem for those around them.
	Nor, in my view, is destroying Lebanon's infrastructure acceptable. Not only Lebanon but Israel and the rest of the world need a stable Lebanon in the future. A ruined, impotent and bankrupt Lebanon is not only a cause of despair to the people of Lebanon themselves; it becomes a danger to the region, and beyond. If what is happening now creates a failed state of Lebanon, it will be antagonistic to Israel and distrustful of its wider friends, who did not help it in its time of need. It will be a breeding ground for future anti-Israeli sentiment and for anti-American resentment, and it will, of necessity, be the ground from which the next generation of terrorists will be born.
	That is why the onslaught on Lebanon must now cease. I am happy to see precision attacks on the terrorists continue and I wish them well, because the right exists to root out that terrorism. But I have to say that I doubt whether an international stability force is a workable suggestion. Stability forces in conflict zones do not have a great record throughout history and we, on our side, should be very careful about claiming to support such a force when our own forces are so stretched between Iraq and Afghanistan that it is highly unlikely that we could even take part in it ourselves. We must therefore concentrate on those areas where we can at least be constructive.
	I want the level of violence to be decreased. I hope that we can persuade the Government of Israel that the time has come to scale down—

Michael Ancram: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for asking that question, and I am just coming to the question of Syria. At the moment, it would be very difficult to persuade Iran to take a view different from the one that they are currently taking. But I have always believed that, through diplomatic pressure, Syria is open to changing the direction that it has been taking—wrongly, in my view—for so long. We can show the Syrians that there is a better future for them—if they change their ways and go down another path. That is something that the British Government should be doing.
	The middle east is a vicious circle, and that circlewill not be broken in the flames of war; it can be dismantled only by a return to dialogue and negotiation. We should help to facilitate that, using the vast number of contacts that we have in Israel, Palestine and the rest of that region to get the dialogue going again. Building bridges is what we should all be about now—not destroying bridges, as we have seen happening over the past few days.

Andrew Love: I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way. Does he accept that one the issue that we still need to resolve is the outstanding dispute between Lebanon and Israel over the Shabba farms? Until we resolve that, relations will not improve to the extent that we want.

Michael Ancram: When I say that our troops should return from Iraq, I am told that we would leave chaos behind us. That is a real fear, but I am worried that the deterioration of the situation means that the same case might be made in a year's time, or three years' time. The present difficulties now demand that we rethink our role in Iraq, and I hope that our troops will be brought home.
	I take a totally different view, however, aboutthe equally difficult circumstances that obtain in Afghanistan. If we were to leave that country, we would leave not only chaos but the virtual certainly that a Taliban state would be restored. Such a state—once again and as its fundamentalist philosophy dictates—would allow itself to become a base for international Islamist terrorism. As we know, that would pose a direct threat to Britain, Europe, the US and all western nations.
	I am concerned that we face very difficult circumstances in Afghanistan because our mission there is not clear enough and because the resources provided to it are not yet sufficient. I hope that the Government will consider very carefully over the summer what is needed to make sure that our mission there succeeds.
	Our role in international affairs must not be based on romantic dreams of curing the world, nor on an unquestioning acceptance of US policy, but on realism and on what is in the British national interest. From what I have heard today, I cannot be certain that that is necessarily the Government's position. I hope that, over the summer, they will make sure that it is their position by the autumn.

Gerald Kaufman: Let us set aside the morality of the situation—the wanton slaughter of hundreds of innocent Lebanese and the destruction of their infrastructure, the havoc caused by the Israeli army in Gaza and the kidnapping of half of the Palestinian Government, the murder of innocent Israelis and the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. Let us accept as a given that Hezbollah and Hamas are terrorist organisations, and that the Israeli Government are dominated by right-wing thugs—unfortunately now augmented by the former peacenik leader of the Labour party who is in charge of the attacks on Lebanon.
	Let us look instead at the undeniable facts. This is Israel's fourth invasion of Lebanon, and none of the three previous invasions has been successful. The 1978 invasion was called Operation Peace in Galilee: is Galilee at peace today? The commander, Rafael Eitan, described the Litani Operation by saying, "We come, we kill, we go." It did not achieve its objective. In 1982 I was with Israeli troops after they had invaded Lebanon. It was the first time that I had ever seen Israeli soldiers who were scared of the enemy—and I have been with Israeli soldiers from 1967 onwards. That war caused Sharon's resignation and Begin's resignation. It did not work, and this war will not work either. Already, Israeli troops are taking serious casualties on the ground and their commanders are warning that they cannot go on in this way.
	Israel's invasion of Lebanon is not simply immoral; it is futile. At the same time, Israel is facing an existential threat. A once-proud nation of pioneers and warriors who proclaimed that Jews would never again be confined in ghettos is now building an illegal wall behind which its people are cowering in a Jewish Israeli-made do-it-yourself ghetto. That is what is happening to Israel now.
	Within a measurable period, Palestinians will outnumber Israelis. Unless there is a two-state solution, with two countries—one for the Palestinians—the Palestinians will be penned into bantustans directly adjacent to affluent illegal Jewish settlements. As in South Africa, this will become unviable for the Israeli state and the whole future of Israel as a viable state will be thrown into doubt. The only way of saving Israel—do not let us talk about the Palestinian interests, although I have championed them for many years—is a two-state solution.
	Hezbollah and Hamas set out to cause chaos. That is what they are about, and they are achieving it. The Israeli Government and the United States Government are obliging Hamas and Hezbollah in the way they are approaching the situation. They are playing with fire. If Syria and Iran are drawn into the conflict, global repercussions will burgeon out of control, with an incalculable economic impact for the whole of the western developed world far worse than the oil shock of 1973, which, among other things, brought down the Heath Government.
	Remember what happened to Jimmy Carter. He was brought down by Iran as President of the United States. Remember, too, that western meddling in the middle east ends again and again in tears. We are just commemorating the 50th anniversary of the illegal invasion of Suez by Britain and France in collusion with Israel.
	There is a story of a scorpion approaching a frog on the banks of the River Jordan. The scorpion says to the frog, "Will you give me a ride on your back across the river?" The frog says, "Don't be foolish, you will sting me and I will die." The scorpion says to the frog, "Don't you be foolish. If I sting you I will drown. That goes against all kinds of sense." So the frog says to the scorpion, "Get on my back." Half way across the river the scorpion stings the frog. The frog says, "What have you done? Now I will die and you will drown." The scorpion says, "This is the middle east." What we are seeing is futility on all sides in this conflict.
	Those of us like me who have championed the state of Israel from before its foundation are filled with tears and shame at what an Israeli Government are doing to the Jewish people of Israel.
	I have championed a Palestinian state since my first meetings with Yasser Arafat in Tunis. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) that Arafat made a profound error in rejecting the Barak offer at Camp David, but there is no point in repining. There is no point in saying that things should have been done differently. When I first visited Syria, I had a meeting with the vice-president in which he spent 40 minutes talking about the iniquities of the Zionists since the Balfour declaration. When he had finished, I said, "Yes, let's take all that for granted, but that was then. What about today and what about tomorrow?"
	Our British Government have a role to play in trying to drill sense into the Israeli Government and in trying to explain to the Palestinian people that their best interests are not those championed by Hamas. But let us be clear: America invaded Iraq—so we are told—to bring democracy to the middle east, to get genuine elections. The Palestinians held a genuine election, so are we saying that the only acceptable genuine elections in the middle east are those whose result is acceptable to George W. Bush? If so, there will be few successful acceptable democratic elections in the middle east.
	I am more pessimistic about this situation than I have been in more than 40 years of involvement in the middle east. I do not believe that it helps the Israelis to give them a free hand. The duty of my right hon. Friends in the British Government, whom I have constantly supported and will continue to support, is to make it clear to the Israelis and to the Palestinians that compromise is essential. That is what I told Arafat when I first met him and I said it to him again and again.
	Letting the Israeli dogs of war loose on Lebanon will solve nothing. It will undermine the existence of the state of Israel, it will kill more and more Israelis and the poor Palestinians at the bottom will continueto suffer. I look to our Government to try to do something to help us out of that mess.

Dai Davies: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me to make my maiden speech in this important debate. I shall take up as little time as I possibly can, because many Members want to speak.
	I want to put on record my sincere thanks to the Speaker's Office and all the House staff for their help and support over the past three weeks; their fairness and dedication is to be commended. I offer special thanks to the hon. Member for Wyre Forest(Dr. Taylor) for his support and friendship since I arrived in the House. I would apologise for the confusion caused by another David Davies enteringthe House, but we solved it amicably.
	It is a great honour and privilege for me to represent the people of Blaenau Gwent at the highest level of politics, but it is also a humbling experience when I think about the hopes and expectations of my constituency for its future. I take this opportunity to pay my respects to my predecessor, Peter Law, a friend and a great political servant to Blaenau Gwent for more than 30 years. He followed the tradition in our area of producing people who were prepared to speak out for fairness and justice for all.
	From the days of the Chartist riots, and through books such as "Rape of the Fair Country" and "The Citadel", it can be seen that the south Wales valleys have played a significant part in the present structure of British politics and the way in which our communities are represented. Blaenau Gwent has proven that we take the people who elect us for granted at our peril. We must respect and care for our communities at all times and ensure that at all levels of government we give value for money. Do we believe that at this moment in time the general public would support a move to use taxpayers' money to finance political elections?
	We must never be afraid to talk and listen to the people we represent and to encourage them to take a full and active part in politics and the democratic representative process. We should not be considering ways to force people to vote. Instead, we should seek to find out why more and more people are becoming disillusioned with the political process. If we are honest with ourselves, we already know the answer. We must strengthen the citizenship agenda for schools to encourage more young people to talk about politics and learn the art of debate. Visits to this House would be an inspiration to them all.
	The problems and social needs of my constituency are not unique and have been the same for some years. Employment, health, education and community safety are at the top of the list, as I am sure they are across many areas of the country. We are all here for the same reason: to improve the standard of living and life chances of the people we represent. I have been a shop steward all my working life, giving a voice to those who needed help and support, and that is the role that I will play for the people of Blaenau Gwent. I believe that, as long as I carry out my duty with honesty, integrity, openness and accountability, I will continue to have their support.
	The south Wales valleys have played a significant part in the social and economic development of this country from the industrial revolution to the present day, and the people of Blaenau Gwent want to continue to play their part in developing a strong and vibrant economy for future generations. One of the greatest opportunities for my constituency is the development of an integrated tourist industry across Blaenau Gwent and neighbouring areas. I am sure that the significant numbers of visitors who came to our area during the by-election, increasing our tourist trade considerably, would agree that we have an industrial history and a medical history that is second to none, and some of the most beautiful valley countryside in Britain. I hope that all Members would support us in establishing an attraction that would bring visitors from all over the world and provide much-needed employment for our area.
	This afternoon's debate on international affairs should take into account the role that our individual communities can play in this very important issue—primarily through education and the sharing of information. The involvement of our young people is important in considering international affairs. I had planned to make my maiden speech during the debate to establish a commissioner for older people in Wales, because over the past two months I have aged considerably and will probably have need of their help sooner rather than later. The intergenerational working in our communities is vital to any respect agenda. We are never too old or too young to learn from each other. Wales can lead the way with a commissioner for older people, working alongside the already appointed commissioner for young people. The investment in young people in terms of meaningful training and practical skills, as well as academic courses— perhaps with training involving a mixture of ages and of experience—is vital in creating real and lasting job opportunities and increased earning potential. We must ensure that areas of the country that receive European funding, and have a Community First process in place, maximise its potential for the benefit of our people.
	The people of Blaenau Gwent have suffered the loss of coal and steel industries in recent years, but, as we have shown over the past two months, we are people who care for our community. We had no party machine, only individuals who wanted their voices heard and I would respectfully request that those who believe that our by-election result was just an insignificant protest should think again and heed the result—do not ignore it.
	I will do everything that I can to deliver thehopes, wishes and aspirations of the people in my constituency by following my principles of socialism, trade unionism, co-operation and family and Christian values. To add to the debate this afternoon, there was a phrase used many years ago—jaw-jaw not war-war. From what we have heard today, that is the way forward. Thank you for this opportunity, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I thank all hon. Members for their patience.

Iain Wright: I will come to attacks by Lebanon into Israel shortly. We should all recognise that Hezbollah is also trying to wreck Israel's infrastructure—it is just that the means of achieving that effectively have not yet been reached.
	Not all the rockets that have been used are Katyushas, which have been the missiles of choice for Hezbollah in recent years. Katyushas generally have a range of 20 km. If they are fired from southern Lebanon, they are able to hit northern Israeli towns, albeit with somewhat little precision. However, the past few days have seen rockets fired deeper and deeper into Israel. Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, has come under intense fire, and it has suffered some of the worst attacks in the current crisis. On Sunday morning, for example, Syrian-produced Fajr missiles hit Haifa, killing eight maintenance workers at a train depot and injuring 53 others. This week, Israel claims to have destroyed an Iranian-made missile—the Zelzal—which has a range of about 200 km. Those areominous developments. Terrorist groups, backed by neighbouring states that have pledged to obliterate Israel and wipe it off the face of the earth, appear to be close to having weapons that threaten the security of most of Israel, including Tel Aviv, its major financial centre.
	I accept that Israel is bombing Lebanon, and let me make it clear that I want that to stop. However, the House must recognise that it would stop immediately if Hezbollah released the kidnapped soldiers and stopped the rocket attacks. That must be recognised in any discussion about proportionality.

Iain Wright: I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me, but I want to press on.
	In a meeting in the House only last month, the Israeli Prime Minister told hon. Members that he would pursue diplomatic negotiations and aimed to begin negotiation with President Abbas before embarking on his plans for withdrawal from the west bank. From a wider perspective, in April this year President Bush welcomed Prime Minister Siniora to the White House and proclaimed that Lebanon
	"can serve as a great example of what is possible in the broader Middle East".
	Those small steps towards peace and wider regional stability and prosperity were not in the interests of terrorist organisations, which thrive on chaos and fear. Their power derives from derailing negotiations and causing turbulence and violence.
	I have no doubt that Hezbollah kidnapped the Israeli soldier in a deliberate attempt to stop any progress in the peace process, and to escalate violence and so increase and consolidate its power. In so doing, it has taken the world's attention away from Iran's attempts to secure nuclear weapons—a prospect that would have immensely harmful repercussions for the stability of the wider regional and global theatres. We cannot conclude that Iran directly ordered the attacks and kidnappings against Israeli targets—that would bea crude assessment—but there is a strong and co-ordinated web of influence between Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, and that relationship has been nurtured over the past few decades.
	Hezbollah was created by the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war, and since then it has received training and weaponry and technical expertise from Tehran. Iran is Hezbollah's main sponsor, donating an average of $100 million to $200 million a year. As was said earlier, Hezbollah has deliberately entwined itself into civilian life in Lebanon. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) pointed out, missiles and military equipment are stored in densely populated areas.
	That is the context of the current crisis. Israel has a wish—a legitimate one, in my opinion—to try to destroy Hezbollah's military capability to minimise the risks to its citizens and to mitigate, as much as possible, the existential threat to itself. Israel also has a right, which I do not think anybody in the House or elsewhere could dispute, to defend its borders. However, that task is made immeasurably more difficult by the deliberate intention of Hezbollah to intertwine its military capability into civilian life in Lebanon. This tactic is cowardly, but I urge restraint on Israel.
	The loss of life, the injury and the impact upon the basic humanitarian situation in Lebanon have been truly horrendous. Israel must show restraint and try to ensure that its legitimate aim of destroying the military wing of Hezbollah does not coincide with or cause the destruction of the infrastructure of normal Lebanese life. Such a move would help breed even more of a culture of hatred and disaffection in the region, and would result in the evaporation of support from actors such as the G8 and Saudi Arabia.
	Diplomatic pressure for a ceasefire and thereafter a negotiated two-state structure are the only solutions, both in the short term and taking a longer perspective. I fully support the Government in their stance on the matter and their ability to try and get all parties to the negotiating table, but I accept that influence on Hezbollah is limited. The world must be firm that any of those short green shoots of peace which we have seen in recent months in the region are not trampled upon and destroyed for ever by extremist and aggressive states and terrorist organisations.

Richard Burden: When one becomes involved in issues such as those in the middle east and develops friendships there, it is easy to see the suffering of only one side. It is easy to rationalise the indefensible and dehumanise the other side. I hope that being aware of that will stop me ever rationalising or excusing rocket attacks, or saying that they are okay if they are provoked or—to use that ever-so-polite word—"proportionate". If I applythose sentiments to rocket attacks—I do without qualification—I also say that, when air strikes kill 300 people and displace 500,000, when 100 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in the past few weeks and when water and electricity supplies are cut to homes and hospitals in one of the poorest and most densely populated places on earth, people should not rationalise that or say that, somehow, it is okay.
	I never thought that Ministers in the Government whom I support, who rightly prefix everything that they say with a demand for an immediate and unconditional end to rocket attacks, would find it so difficult to call for an immediate ceasefire by both sides. I say to my hon. Friend the Minister for the Middle East that, unless the Government change their description of events, their credibility in the outside world will take a knock and the charge of double standards will have considerable force.
	The Prime Minister told us that we needed to examine the underlying causes and I agree with that. There is no time to consider most of them, so I shall mention only a couple. The Prime Minister singled out the kidnappings of Corporal Shalit in Gaza in a raid on 25 June and two soldiers in Lebanon on 12 July. He said that we must call for their immediate and unconditional release and I agree. However, if we say that, what about the families of the 741 Palestinian prisoners whom Israeli troops abducted and who are still held without trial in Israeli jails? Corporal Shalit is 19 years old; 282 of Palestinian prisoners are under 18. What do we say to Palestinians when the unjustifiable capture of one Israeli causes an international incident but that of Palestinians does not? Can we honestly say that there is no connection between that and the sense of hopelessness that breeds terrorism? There is a connection, and we ignore it at our peril.

Richard Younger-Ross: I should like to repeat the call for another urgent debateon international affairs. The hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) mentioned two other international issues, but there are also problems in Tibet, North Korea, Nigeria, the Caribbean and other places, and we need time to debate those issues as well as returning to the incidents in the middle east.
	I shall concentrate my brief comments today on the middle east. We all feel resentment when we are slighted. There are Back Benchers here who were once Ministers and who are still seething that they no longer hold that position. That anger can last for years and sometimes blight their lives. But what resentment must people feel when they see their land cut off by a wall so that they can no longer get to their stock? What resentment must people feel when they see their shops and premises destroyed by shellfire? What resentment must people feel as they stand and watch bulldozers moving over their homes? And what resentment must someone feel when the child in their arms dies as a result of an attack? To balance that, what resentment must an emergency worker in Israel feel when they have to clear up the wreckage and carnage caused by a suicide bomber on a bus?
	I do not expect a country to react to such circumstances in an emotional way. I expect a rational response. The right hon. and learned Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) was right to say that we in the House are friends of both Palestine and Israel. It is the duty of friends to say, "Hold on. We understand your anger. What is happening to you is wrong, but your response has to achieve an end. You have invaded Lebanon before, and it has not worked. Your reaction now might bring temporary respite, but it will make things worse in the long run. You are destroying the bridges and infrastructure that were improving the quality of people's lives and bringing economic success to the country, which would have done a lot to ameliorate that anger and resentment." I urge everyone to say clearly to Israel, "Cease. Stop. Pull back from what you are doing. Use surgical attacks if necessary; we understand that you have a right to self-defence. But what you are doing now is not going to help you in the long term."

Ann McKechin: I shall restrict my remarks to the humanitarian consequences of the conflict. As many speakers have mentioned today, more than a third of the victims are children. They are the voiceless ones in this tragedy, and I hope that we will all remember them in our considerations.
	I totally condemn the actions of Hezbollah, but all sovereign Governments have a duty to minimisethe risk to civilians and the damage to civilian infrastructure. The United Nations human rights spokesperson, and its humanitarian co-ordinator, Jan Egeland, have both referred to the tragedy that will soon emerge as a result of people being trapped in their homes and cities, which they are not allowed to leave. Their water and electricity supplies are being cut off, and they face an utterly horrific humanitarian disaster.
	The international community needs to re-examine its role in this dispute. We were scheduled to discuss the Department for International Development White Paper today, some of which is relevant to our debate. It reminds us that all 191 United Nations member states
	"endorsed for the first time the groundbreaking principle of a 'responsibility to protect'. They agreed that while individual governments are responsible for the protection of their own people, the international community would no longer tolerate inaction by national governments in the face of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity within their borders."
	If we truly want to live up to those principles, we have a duty to make it clear and transparent when any party to this dispute has acted disproportionately, and to call for an immediate ceasefire. There have been reports of a week's delay until someone does something, but that is not the way to live up to our responsibilities. More than ever, we need to be seen to be an objective party in relation to the dispute. We need to make the civilian populations our first priority. More than ever, we need to show our real support for the moderate voices on all sides of the dispute, whether they are in Israel, Lebanon or the Palestinian community.

Patrick Cormack: I want to make three brief points.
	First, everyone has talked about the calm and measured speeches from the Front Benches, and I endorse that. However, on Monday, the Minister who will respond to the debate made an excellent appearance in the House, and I put it to him that it would be a good idea if the ambassadors of Syria, Iran and, indeed, Israel, were summoned to the Foreign Office, so that that calm, measured language could be conveyed to them, and they could be told how the Government felt about these matters. He responded disarmingly and frankly to say that he had not really thought of that, but that it was a good idea. I would like to know whether that idea has been put into practice. It is a time-honoured practice that, when a country seeks to exert influence, and when other countries behave in a less than entirely admirable way, their ambassadors are summoned. I think that that would be good in this instance.
	Secondly, I entirely endorse what has been said on both sides of the House about the actions of the Syrian and Iranian Governments, which are utterly indefensible. No one in the House can begin to condone terrorism. On the other hand, at the moment, Israel needs friends who are, above all, candid. It needs people who will say, "Of course we believe absolutely in your right to exist. Of course we are totally dedicated and committed to that. But it is possible that in your response, disproportionate as I believe that it is in some respects, you are actually making your own position much more difficult." In that sense, the hon. Member for Teignbridge (Richard Younger-Ross) made an eloquent speech, and I endorse what he said. I hope that the Government will talk to Israeli Ministers in that regard.
	Thirdly, the people who are rubbing their hands at the moment are those who support terrorism, in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever it is practised. The people who are delighted at the disproportionate response of Israel are the terrorists—the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the terrorists who are raining rockets on Israel and who precipitated this crisis by seizing that soldier a few weeks ago. The House cannot, because of our commitments over the last few years, fail to recognise that fact. That is why I so disagree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), who calls for a withdrawal from Iraq. At the moment, that would send out all the worst signals, whatever one may think of the background.
	In the remaining seconds available to me, I appeal to the Minister to respond to my points, and to do everything possible—

Quentin Davies: I shall make five points in three minutes, if I can manage that.
	First, I think that the Foreign Secretary wasvery wise to resist pressure to say whether she considered Israel's response to be proportionate or disproportionate. I am sorry that others were not quite so statesmanlike. It is extraordinarily difficult to say what is a proportionate and what is a disproportionate response in such circumstances. Is it proportionate not to take out stores of missiles because Hezbollah chooses to locate them in populated areas? That is scandalous in itself, and is of course the responsibility of the Government of Lebanon, although no one has wanted to say that in the House today. The Government of Lebanon have simply acquiesced in the state of affairs for a very long time. They have made no attempt to enforce Security Council resolution 1559, and I am afraid that a great deal of responsibility now lies on their shoulders.
	Secondly, there is no doubt in the House and in the world about who is responsible for this. The middle east has been pretty calm for the past couple of years, and certainly during the past few months. There can be no doubt that it was an entirely gratuitous and deliberate decision by Hamas and Hezbollah—perhaps acting in concert, perhaps not—to attack Israeli soldiers, and to capture some Israeli soldiers and hold them hostage, that started the crisis. We do not do a service to the facts, and we certainly do not do a service to peace, if we do not recognise that, and if we try to put the attacker and the attacked and the innocent and the guilty on the same footing.
	Thirdly, many people are now saying that because there is great conflict and loss of life on all sides, the answer is for the international community to put pressure on the parties. That is understandable, but it has not been thought through properly. It is not possible to put pressure on Hezbollah or Hamas. It is not even possible to put pressure on their supporters, Syria and Iran. If we could put pressure on Iran we could solve the nuclear weapons problem, but we all know that we cannot do that. Putting pressure on the parties basically means putting pressure on Israel.
	What a perverse and absurd situation that would be. What a terrible, dangerous message to send around the world, and the middle east in particular: that if a country launches rocket attacks on Israel or attack Israeli soldiers, the international community will put pressure not on that country but on Israel. That really would be extremely perverse and extremely dangerous, and we should not do it.
	Fourthly, Israel must learn the lessons of its mistakes. In no circumstances should it carry out a prisoner exchange. It is, to some extent, paying a terrible price for having done that in the past.
	My final point is that the only solution is an international force. That is the only alternative to an indefinite buffer zone in southern Lebanon—

Crispin Blunt: I welcome the statements made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) and the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Mr. Moore), who both made it clear that they believed that Israel's response was not proportionate. As to what the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) said, we would have been much better off if Israel had exercised restraint. Indeed, Israel itself would have been a great deal better off. We have been down this road before, in 1982, and Hezbollah grew and sustained its strength out of the consequences of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon that year. The consequences of the present invasion of Lebanon will be far more damaging to the Government of Lebanon than to Hezbollah, which is not in the best interestsof all.
	In the very few moments available, I want to reflect on the dangerous overlap with our policy towards Iran—a source of considerable danger for the liberal west, as its values are so different. The situation is somewhat analogous to that of the Soviet Union, which was also a powerful force that was very different from us ideologically. My proposal is that we need to understand the country a little better and try to develop contacts with it, as I am attempting to do myself. However, Israel continues to accept the appalling injustice that has been meted out historically to the Palestinians and does not appear to be pursuing a policy that recognises that injustice. Until the Palestinians start to feel that Israel has a made, atthe very least, a serious attempt to address it and to find a two-state solution, all these issues are going to get horribly mixed up—and with all the consequences for the strategic position of ourselves and our allies.
	We have been quite close to a two-state established solution. The Geneva accord was negotiated between Palestinians and Israelis of good will. The negotiations at Taba and then at Camp David came close. I would reject the interpretation that the Palestinians missed an important opportunity, as they could not realistically have accepted what was on offer. What the Government of Israel and the Israelis need to understand is that until the Palestinian issue is addressed, Israel will never have peace. Until that is done, we are going to get into these horrible complications of living in a world split between Islamic and our own ideologies, in which the state of Israel is going to be a horrible—

Julian Lewis: As I am morally bound to speak for just three minutes—and I shall do so—I shall make only two points. The first is to agree with my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) when he said that various people will be rubbing their hands with glee at the developments that have taken place. In particular, the strategists in Tehran will be doing so, because Hezbollah would not have initiated this cycle of violence and counter- action without orders and permission from Iran. We have to ask why Iran would want to give that permission. The answer is obvious when we look at the proportion of time spent in this very debate on the issue of the confrontation between Israel and Lebanon, compared with the time spenton the Iranian quest for nuclear weapons. This development is assisting Iran in its quest to become a nuclear power, and we should draw appropriate lessons from that.
	I thought today that, for the first time in nine years in this House, I would agree with something said by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), when he told the story of the frog and the scorpion and how they both drowned because the scorpion stings the frog in mid-river, despite not being able to swim. However, for some reason, the right hon. Gentleman chose to change the ending. The ending actually is that as they are both drowning, the scorpion admits to the frog that it knew that it would also die, but it could not help stinging because that is in its nature.
	What is the nature of some of the groups that are operating in the conflict today? We owe a debt to my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), who has just published a new book, "Celsius 7/7", which traces some of the ideological roots of Islamism. He quotes one of its founding fathers as saying, when talking about the ideal Islamist state, that
	"a state of this sort cannot evidently restrict the scope of its activities...It seeks to mould every aspect of life and activity in consonance with its moral norms and programmes of social reform. In such a state, no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and private. Considered from this perspective the Islamic State bears a kind of resemblance to the Fascist and Communist states."
	What we are dealing with in Hamas and Hezbollah are totalitarian movements. This House can prate all it likes about immediate ceasefires and two-state solutions, but as long as there are actors on the scene who do not wish for anything else but to create a new holocaust as they deny the last one, those solutions will not suffice.

Stewart Hosie: I wish briefly to take the Minister for the Middle East back to the subject of the preparations for the evacuation. I asked him earlier this week whether the Royal Navy would evacuate not only those who are United Kingdom passport holders, but their dependents who might not be. He gave a clear answer, but I ask him that question again because a news broadcast of last night had a caption saying that "UK passport holders" had been asked to assemble. Can he look into this as a matter of urgency, in case a slightly incorrect message is going out?
	We all view with great concern what is going in Lebanon, and in particular the potential for the collapse of democracy there and the very real possibility of a new civil war. That alone should be an encouragement to us all to support the creation of a United Nations intervention force with, as the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) said, a very strong mandate indeed. We cannot expect a fragile Government in the fragile democracy of Lebanon to disband or disarm Hezbollah ontheir own. That would certainly lead to civil war, and I suspect that the last thing Israel needs is another failed state on its northern border.
	The hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey) talked about the perception that we were not being even-handed. Some of the comments coming out of the west have not been even-handed, but we must be so. That means that when we call for the kidnapped soldiers to be released immediately and for the missile strikes to stop immediately, we must also call for the Israeli shelling to stop and for the collective punishment of those in Gaza and Lebanon, who might not be Hamas voters or Hezbollah fighters, to cease at the same time. For that to happen, the immediate fighting must come to an end, and I find it extraordinary that the UK Government have thus far equivocated, even on calling for an immediate ceasefire to effect those ends.
	As we all know, the ongoing suffering of the Palestinian people is an open sore. It continues to radicalise people and to act as a recruiting sergeant throughout the Muslim world and the middle east. Therefore, we must deliver the long-term solution—the two-state solution of Palestine and Israel. We must return to the road map.
	The UK has a massive role to play in that. As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a G8 member and a large state within the European Union, it has a great deal of weight that it can use. However, at the moment I fear—not least because of unguarded comments in the press earlier this week—that in many parts of the world the UK is seen as a client of the USA, and that must cease. There must be a coherent and robust position to bring all sides around the negotiating table and demand an immediate ceasefire; that must happen as quickly as possible.

Keith Simpson: This debate was called for by a number of hon. Members and hon. Friends, not least those of us who are regular attendees of middle east debates in Westminster Hall. I know that the Government were nervous about holding this debate—and, as a former Whip, I can imagine that it was constrained in its time as much as possible. However, the Government should not have been worried about it. This debate has proved that Members can argue very strongly and passionately about an issue that is very important. In the words of the Foreign Secretary, the current crisis is perhaps one of the greatest in the middle east that we have had to face. I urge Ministers to bear in mind Members' calls for another statement or debate on this important subject, and to provide one perhaps next week.
	Many Members have spoken, some of them under the enormous constraint of having only three minutes, and I shall not attempt to fill up my 10 minutes by reading out a list of names and making a few brief comments; instead, I shall pick out a few speeches.
	The hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Davies) made his maiden speech in the middle of this important debate, and I congratulate him on it. My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow), who rightly pointed out that this debate is on not the middle east but international affairs, spoke with passion—and within the allotted time—on the very important subjects of Darfur and Burma. I note that he has tabled a question on Burma for next week's Foreign Affairs Question Time.
	The Foreign Secretary spoke with a degree of caution, given the minefield through which she is attempting to steer Government policy, and the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Mr. Moore) spoke with great reasonableness. But as you might expect me to say, Mr. Deputy Speaker, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) spoke very well indeed—I say that not because he happens to lead for the Conservatives on foreign affairs—across a wide waterfront about middle east issues. Importantly, he talked about what needs to be done.
	Members in all parts of the House, whatever position they adopted on the middle east, agreed that this conflict has the potential not only to be highly local, with an immediate impact on people living in Israel, Gaza and Lebanon, but to draw in other countries as well, and to be a nightmare scenario for all of us.
	So the real question that we face is, can Britain actually make a difference in this crisis? Here, I want to make a few points, some of which reinforce those made not only by my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks, but by Members in all parts of the House. First, the British Government do have a role to play. Although, in a classically British way, we often underestimate ourselves and think that we perhaps do not have influence, we have direct influence over most of our allies. We do have influence over the United States of America, and it is important that, at times, behind closed doors—if not always in public—we be frank and honest with the Americans. Indeed, we can go to places in the middle east that the Americans cannot, which is a very important point.
	As my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks said, this crisis has again proved—as virtually every crisis in the middle east does—the lack of any cohesion and direction on the part of the international community, particularly all the great powers of one kind or another. The point that I take from this debate is that, if we resolve the immediate conflict in the next two or three weeks—perhaps we will—the danger is that, once again, most of the major Governments outside the area will wash their hands, walk away and look at some other crisis. We cannot do that again, not only because of the immediate crisis involving Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas, but because, as many Members said, of the activities of Iran in particular, which is playing a very dangerous game. Iran is sponsoring terrorism that is aimed directly against many countries in the middle east, including Arab countries. Some of those activities have resulted in the death and injury of British military personnel, and we cannot walk away from that.
	The Government must take the following courses of action. First, they must make certain that the period when military operations are given a chance is as short as possible. The Israelis have every right to protect themselves against terrorism and rocket and shell attacks but, as many hon. Members noted, they will be only too well aware that there can be no long-term military solution. The conflict can be resolved only by political means.
	In addition, many hon. Members spoke about what is happening in Lebanon. My fear is that, although the Israelis have every right to root out the Hezbollah rockets, they might inflict so much damage that the state of Lebanon will be literally knocked out. If that happens, Israel will be in danger of losing the support of world opinion, which will render a political solution much more difficult to achieve.
	Secondly, the Government must energise the international community. We are a member of the UN Security Council, and I look forward to hearing what actions Ministers propose to take there. Thirdly, as many hon. Members noted, there is the problem of getting humanitarian aid to Lebanon, the west bank and Gaza.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) and I spoke to the Lebanese ambassador earlier today, who said that the problem was not one of money but of getting aid to communities. He emphasised that, with 500,000 people crossing fields and walking along roads to get to Beirut, there is likely to be a civil disorder crisis in that city in the next two or three days. We look to the British Government, in particular, to take a lead on that.
	Finally, I believe that the House of Commons is justified in taking a view on this crisis, and that the Government should not feel that it should not be debated. Strong and genuine views have been expressed on all sides of the House today, but mostly in a constructive manner. This Government resemble the Government who faced a series of international crises some 60 years ago. In the late 1930s, faced with an even greater crisis than this, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, said that his Government were hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. This Government may have to do the same.

Kim Howells: If my hon. Friend will send me the details, we will certainly take a look at it.
	So far, approximately 2,800 people are being evacuated. It is an enormous number. A further evacuation is planned by sea tomorrow. It has been an enormous exercise.
	If the events of this last week or so have taught us anything, it ought to have taught us that we must never and can never retreat behind imaginary fortress walls around these islands. The enemies of democracy will always bring the fight to us, wherever and whenever they can. The first duty of any British Government is to defend the lives and liberties of our citizens here and across the world. That is why we must continue to maintain the most professional armed forces in the world and why it is vital that those brave men and women are directed by a democratically elected Government. It is why we must maintain the superb work undertaken in the world's most difficult areas by our Department for International Development and why we must deploy and use to the best effect the great skills of those who staff our diplomatic missions abroad.
	The sight of the Royal Navy's grey funnels off the coast of Lebanon, whether they were seen directly by those who wished to be evacuated or indirectly on television by their loved ones around the world must have been one of the sweetest sights that they will ever see. All of us must pay enormous tribute to the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, which supported it, and to all our armed forces who have taken part and will continue to take part in the operation. I am not sure that people have understood the danger in which they operated off the coast of Lebanon or the danger tothe helicopters that flew over Lebanon. This is an extremely difficult situation.
	We are very worried, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, about British citizens who are trapped in difficult areas in the south of Lebanon. We must find ways of getting them out. We are working with our colleagues in Germany, the United Nations and other countries to mount convoys and try to get the agreement of all the parties to the dispute to secure safe passage for those trapped individuals to points of safety. We know that a United Nations ferry is going into Tyre in the south. We hope that we can get many of our citizens and nationals and their relations on to that boat.
	The Government will try to live up to the challenge of using the superb professionalism among our armed forces and our diplomatic service to help the United Nations and the international community to bring peace to Lebanon and the wider middle east. That must be the message that goes forward from this debate tonight.

Bob Spink: This petition is similar to one I presented last week, but residents have collected another 200 signatures, which they wanted me to present to the House. I am grateful for this opportunity to do so.
	The petition is against asbestos storage on the Manor trading estate, which is an inappropriate site due to its proximity to schools and residential areas. I am grateful to Councillors Jackie Govier, Bill Dick and Colin Riley for their work fighting for their community on the issue.
	The petitioners say that the proposal will allow the storage of hazardous asbestos waste, which would introduce unacceptable risk and increased pressureof use of local roads and that it is particularly inappropriate in view of the immediate proximity of residential homes and a primary school. The petitioners further believe that there are much more appropriate sites for that activity in the local area and elsewhere, which would not cause such conflict.
	The petition states:
	The Petitioners therefore implore the House of Commons to call upon the Government to do all within its power to ensure that Essex County Council reject the application as requested by the Member of Parliament for Castle Point.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	 To lie upon the Table.

Richard Taylor: Mr. Deputy Speaker, please may I ask you to pass on my sincere thanks to Mr. Speaker for selecting this debate? I lost the chance to hold it last week, under rather unusual circumstances that completely terrified and floored me at the time. It is also a great pleasure to see the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy). Previous clashes between us have been rather confrontational—when he was in the Department of Health—but this debate is friendly, not confrontational. It is a joy to talk about the unique collection of antiquities that happens to be in my patch. This is a matter of great importance to many of my constituents in the north-west corner of my constituency, where Worcestershire borders South Staffordshire—in the villages of Wolverley, Cookley and Caunsall, parts of Kidderminster, and Kinver, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack). He is supportive, as is the hon. Member for Dudley, North (Mr. Austin).
	I have raised the matter now because I am aware that English Heritage and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have been undertaking a heritage protection review, which I believe will lead to the Government's heritage White Paper later this year. A letter to me from the deputy secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings ended with this sentence:
	"It is yet to be clear how effective the Review's proposals will be, but the Drakelow site might well be worth raising in any debate."
	That is why I am raising the Drakelow site.
	First, there are the tunnels. I am grateful to Paul Stokes for his volume "Drakelow Unearthed", which I found in the Kidderminster library, which goes into great detail. Drakelow sits at the southern end of a ridge of soft red sandstone in which there are many caves. When Coventry had the tremendous blitz in the second world war, one of the factories making engines for aircraft was bombed out and it was realised that a safe place for making aero engines was needed. Drakelow was picked on because it is so easy to tunnel into the hills. In 1941, 160 ft below the hill top, the tunnels were started, at a cost of £285,000. They were intended to be a safe factory for those people displaced from Coventry.
	The factory was in full production by 1943 at a cost of more than £1 million, so even in those days costs went up tremendously. Unbelievably, under the hill there are 3.5 miles of tunnels and 250,000 sq ft of working space. The site became literally a secret underground city. For those who are interested in second world war aircraft, the factory was building radial engines for the Blenheim and Pegasus engines for Sunderlands. Production carried on until those engines were no longer needed. I believe that the factory was involved in the production of the first jet engines for Meteors, which some of us will remember with great affection.
	Following that, the site was used for storage. It was then transformed and in 1958 it became one of the safe sites for regional government, if regional government had to move out of the main centres. Again, the site catered for approximately 350 people from all Government Departments. A home defence review was undertaken following the change of Government in 1979. The facility was again upgraded, this time ata cost of something like £2 million, and it became a regional government headquarters, rather than a regional seat of government. However, only abouta quarter of the site was used. The site was sold off in 1993 and has since been opened for occasional tours. It is privately owned.
	The icing on the cake is what is on top of the hill. There is an iron age earthworks. There is a fort on the end of the hill that is protected on three sides by steep cliffs, with earthworks on the fourth side. It is a scheduled ancient monument that dates from 600 BC, so I am told. Next, in historical order, there is a large collection of rock-cut houses. As I said, the hill is made of soft red sandstone that is easy to tunnel into. Caves have been inhabited there since at least 1600. They were enlarged in 1769 and 1770 to accommodate the labourers who were building the Staffordshire and Worcestershire canal to connect the black country with the River Severn. They were enlarged yet again in 1850 and this time buildings were added in front. A local iron foundry master built those properties for his workers and made the development look like a Swiss village, with a fascinating little school and everything that was needed.
	Edmund Simons, an Oxford scholar, has studied the dwellings. He describes them as
	"a number of complexes of rock-cut dwellings which are amongst the best preserved (yet least understood) in the UK."
	He also describes them as
	"an exceptionally important 'cave' village of cave houses and rock-cut structures".
	In "Historic Worcestershire", W. Salt Brassington described the dwellings as
	"the most picturesque group in a natural amphitheatre below the earthworks of an ancient camp."
	He waxed quite lyrical as he went on to write:
	"In comparatively few places in the world are civilised people found still living after the manner of primitive man".
	He wrote that in 1894. He also cited the following quote, although I cannot find its origin:
	"in hollow holes, like swarms of tiny ants, in sunless depths of caverns".
	He continued by writing that in that part of the Severn district people
	"have lived in caves from time immemorial".
	A monument to Richard Baxter is also in the same area. He was a non-conformist preacher in the 1600s who was described in the "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" as
	"one of the most learned seventeenth century divines".
	His well-known memorial, which was raised in 1875, is a landmark in the town of Kidderminster, and it is used as a perch by passing pigeons. He has one finger raised to the heavens, and the dedication reads:
	"From 1641 to 1660 this Town was the scene of the Labours of Richard Baxter renowned equally for his Christian Learningand his Pastoral Fidelity.
	In a stormy and divided age he advocated unity and comprehension pointing the way to 'The Everlasting Rest'."
	Most significant of all is the line:
	"Churchmen and Nonconformists united to raise this memorial."
	On top of the tunnels there are many antiquities, but recently there has been a threat to the tunnels. A developer wished to establish a training facility for unemployed people from the midlands, and although the development was small to begin with, it was probably intended to become much bigger. The local council turned it down—thank goodness—because it is green belt land and there were no transport links, and because of the chance of damage to the iron-age fort, the area surrounding the Baxter memorial, and the rock-cut houses. I believe that there is a precedent: in 1967, the then Home Secretary wanted to build a prison for 1,200 people in Wolverley—the next-door village—on the site of a former camp for American forces, but Sir Tatton Brinton, the MP for the area between 1964 to 1974, opposed the development. A public inquiry ruled against the development:
	"The Home Office had failed to justify the siting of a prison involving many new permanent houses in a vulnerable part of the Green Belt and the spoiling of the attractive character of the area for an indefinite period".

David Lammy: That is certainly an interesting idea that should be taken forward locally. My hon. Friend will know that there are several museums in the area, including the Hack Green nuclear bunker museum at Nantwich. When we look to see how we can preserve our heritage, it is important that we work with people at museums, libraries and archives, because they have the expertise to identify and facilitate funding lines.
	Let me return to the current protection arrangements. Alongside the scheduling and listing regimes that I described, we have a regime for protecting individual assets, and there are also tools to protect areas of significance. Most importantly, local authorities have a duty to designate conservation areas, which are areas of special architectural or historic interest that have a character and appearance deserving of preservation and enhancement.
	Those are the main statutory protection systems, but there are also a range of non-statutory protections available to historic assets. English Heritage is responsible for developing registers of historic parks, gardens and battlefields. In addition, almost half of all local authorities, including Wyre Forest district council, have developed lists of locally significant buildings. Information about a building, place or area can also be captured on the national monuments record or on the local historic environment record.
	What do all those designation systems achieve? In some cases, specific designation regimes carry specific protections. For example, listed buildings are managed through the system of listed building consent, scheduled ancient monuments are managed through the system of scheduled monument consent, and some change in conservation areas is managed through specific conservation area consent. However, those individual regulatory regimes are designed to deal with only a small proportion of our historic assets. Most change to our historic environment is managed not through those regimes but as part of the planning system, whereby information about an historic asset may be taken into account as a material consideration in determining a planning application.
	The Drakelow tunnels site is a good illustration of how the various regimes come together, because several protection systems are in operation. The tunnels themselves are neither listed buildings nor scheduled ancient monuments. They were considered for listing by English Heritage in the late 1990s as part of a thematic review of the nine cold war regional seats of government. Following that review, two of the regional seats, at Nottingham and Cambridge, were listed at grade II. The iron age hill fort that sits above them is a scheduled ancient monument, while the Richard Baxter monument is grade II listed. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that it is a complex sitewith different systems bearing on it. Those protection systems sit alongside mainstream planning controls and the priority given to heritage in the Wyre Forest district council plan.
	I have outlined a complex system of heritage protection in England. Indeed, we acknowledge that it is far too complex to be easily understandable. Thatis why we are finalising plans to make it more streamlined, open and accountable. We want to simplify our heritage protection systems and make it easier for local communities to engage with decisions that shape their environment.
	In the time we have left, I do not want to go into the detail of our proposed reforms. Instead, I refer the hon. Gentleman to the 2004 document that the Department published, which sets out the proposed reforms in detail, or to the transcript of my recent appearance, with Baroness Andrews, before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. However, it may help if I briefly outline the key changes that we propose.
	First, we intend to simplify the designation system by developing a new unified register of historic sites and buildings of England. That will bring togetherthe current systems of listing buildings, scheduling ancient monuments and registering parks, gardens and battlefields under a single designation regime. The register will make designation decisions easier to understand and dramatically improve the quality of information available about designated sites toenable owners, communities and local authorities to understand more about their historic assets.
	At the same time as reforming designation, we will encourage local authorities to make greater use of local listing to provide recognition for locally important sites that may not be suitable candidates for national designation. As I have said, many authorities already make extensive use of local lists. Wyre Forest district council has already designated 300 locally listed buildings in Kidderminster and 350 in Stourport. We want to make that local designation process easier, and encourage more local authorities to use it.
	Secondly, we want to streamline and simplify the consent regimes associated with national designation. We will introduce a new heritage consent regime, which will bring together scheduled monument consent and listed building consent in a single system.
	We will introduce new management agreementsfor historic sites. They will encourage constructive partnership between owners, managers, regulators and communities in deciding how best to manage change to complex sites. Developing those partnerships will enable us to reduce bureaucratic burdens on owners and local authorities by reducing the volume of individual consent applications.
	Pilot studies have already shown that the reforms can bring genuine benefits. We intend to publish a White Paper setting out the detail of our reforms later in the year. Once implemented, the reforms are likely to have some impact on a site such as the Drakelow tunnels. Let me outline possible matters of special interest. The improved designation documentation would increase understanding and appreciation of the listed memorial and the scheduled iron age hill fort. The move to encourage greater use of local listing is also relevant. Local listing can make it clear, when planning applications are made, that people treasure the area and building under consideration, and that specific obligations go with it. Wyre Forest district council is already making extensive use of local lists. However, it is worth underlining that the Drakelow tunnels are not currently listed or scheduled. We have not, as far as I am aware, received any recent application to list them.
	The Department will consider any application to have a building or site listed or scheduled, though the tunnels have already been considered for listing by English Heritage. It is also worth pointing out that most change to historic sites is managed not through individual designation systems, but as part of the planning system. I understand that the original planning application for the site in January 2006 has now been withdrawn. If and when a revised application is made, it will be for the local planning authority to determine, in line with the policies set out in its local plan, including those that relate to the historic environment, the future of the site, what is appropriate and how matters should proceed.
	I hope that I have been able to underline to the hon. Gentleman the importance of the historic environment and the reforms that we are trying to introduce to make the system easier to understand and more open, transparent and democratic. Those reforms will also assist locally. However, local things can be done and, if the enthusiasm that he has shown today reflects how local people feel about the site, it is likely to be preserved for many generations to enjoy.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at twenty-six minutes to Seven o'clock.